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MEMORIAL  MEETING 


— OF  THE — 


— HELD   AT — 


May   Memorial    Church,   Syracuse,    N.   Y., 
January   9,    1890. 


STEACUSE,    N.    Y. : 

C.    W.    BARDEEN,    PUBLISHER, 

1890. 


The  Syracuse  Browning  Club  is  the  oldest  in  America,  liav'  -• 
been  organized  Oct.  28,  1882,  and  held  weekly  meetings  exc  t 
in  the  summer,  ever  since.  The  number  of  members  is  nomi 
ally  limited  to  fifty,  but  has  usually  been  permitted  somewhat :  o 
exceed  that  limit.  The  meetings  have  been  held  on  Thursday 
afternoons,  from  three  to  five,  in  addition  to  which  there  have 
been  occasional  evening  entertainments,  with  lectures  by  such 
men  as  Canon  Farrar  and  Prof.  Corson.  The  general  plan  of 
the  regular  meetings  has  been  to  read  consecutively  some  volume 
of  the  author's  works,  enough  being  assigned  for  an  afternoon  to 
occupy  perhaps  a  fourth  of  the  time,  the  rest  being  given  to 
discussion  not  only  of  the  thought  of  the  poet  but  also  of  the 
principles  involved.  It  has  therefore  often  happened  that  the 
meetings  had  quite  as  much  an  ethical  as  a  literary  character. 

A  small  library  of  various  editions  of  Browning's  Works  has 
been  built  up  by  purchase  from  time  to  time,  and  is  at  prestpt 
deposited  with  the  Central  Library.  A  list  of  the  volumes  now 
on  hand  is  given  on  the  following  pages. 


LIBKARY   OF    THE    SYRACUSE    BROWNING  CLUB. 


The  following  volumes  are  carefully  described  in  "  A  Bibliography  of  Robert  Browning, 
from  1833  to  1881.  Compiled  by  Frederick  J.  Furnivall.  Second  Edition,  8vo,  pp.  95,  Lon- 
don, 1881."  The  number  prefixed  to  a  title  shows  the  first  appearance  of  the  poem,  and  the 
chronological  order  in  which  it  appeared.  A  number  in  parenthesis  indicates  the  page  in  the 
Bibliography  on  which  the  book  is  described. 

1.  Pauline;  a  Fragment  of  a  Confession,  Pp.  71.  London,  1833.  Fac- 
simile reprint,  London,  1886. 

2.  Paracelsus.     Pp.  xi,  216.     London,  1835. 

5.  Strafford:  an  historical  Tragedy.     Pp.  vi,  131.     London,  1837. 

6.  Sardello.    Pp.  iv,  253.     London,  1840. 

(P.  51)  Poems.  In  two  volumes.  A  new  edition.  Pp.  viii,  386.  London, 
1849. 

53.  Ghristmas-Ew  and  Easter-Bay.     A  Poem.    Pp.  iv,  142.  London,  1850. 

(P.  53)  Men  and  Women.  In  two  volumes.  Pp.  iv,  260;  iv,  241.  London, 
1855. 

107-123.  Dramatis  Personae.    Pp.  vi,  250.     London,  1864.     ' 

(P.  62)  The  Poetical  Works  of  Robert  Browning,  M.  A.,  Honorary  Fellow  of 
Balliol  College,  Oxford.  In  six  volumes,  pp.  viii,  310;  iv,  287;  iii,  305;  iv, 
310;  iv,  321;  iv,  233.     London,  1868. 

126.  The  Ring  and  the  Book.  In  four  volumes,  pp.  74,  72,  89,  92.  Lon- 
don, 1868. 

129.  Prince  Hoh^nstiel  Schicangau,  Saviour  of  Society.  Pp.  iv,  148.  Lon- 
don, 1871. 

130.  Fifineat  the  Fair.    Pp.  xii,  171.     London,  1872. 

131.  Bed  Cotton  Night-Cap  Country,  or  Turf  and  Towers.  Pp.  vi,  282. 
London,  1873. 

132.  Aristophanes'  Apology,  including  a  Transcript  from  Euripides,  being  tTie 
Last  Adcentui'e  of  Bakiustion.     Pp.  viii,  366.     London,  1875. 

ISd.   The  Inn  Album.     Pp.  iv,  211.     I.ondon,  1875. 

135-151.  Pacchiarotto,  and  hoio  he  worked  in  Distemper :  with  other  Poems. 
Pp.  viii,  241.     London,  1876. 

152.  The  Agamemnon  of  ^scliylus,  transcribed  by  Bobert  Browning.  Ph.  xi, 
148.     London,  1877. 

153.  La  Saisiaz;  The  Two  Poets  of  Croisic.    Pp.  viii,  201.     London,  1878. 
156-161.     Dramatic  Idyls.     Pp.  vi.  143.     London,  1879. 

lQ2-\&^,  Dramatic  Idyls.     Second  Series.     Pp.  viii,  149.     London,  1880. 
(P.  76)  Moxon's  Miniature  Poets.     A  Selection  from  the  works  of  Robert 
Browning.     London,  1865. 

(V) 


Vi  LIBKAEY  OF    THE   8YEACU8E  BEOWNING  CLUB. 

Alsolthe  following  later  volumes: 
Jocoseria,  London,  1883. 
Ferishtah's  Fa)u:ies,  London,  1884. 
Parleyings  with  Certain  People,  London,  1887. 
Asolando,  London,  1890. 
Poetical  Works,  10  vol.,  London.  1883. 
Poetic  and  Dramatic  Works,   6  vols.,  Boston,  1887. 


Horse  and  Foot,  or  Pilgrims  to  Parnassus,  Richard  Crawley,  London,  1868. 

Essays  on  Robert  Browning's  Poetry,  John  T.  Nettleship,  London,  1868. 

Stone«from  Robert  Browning,  Fredk.  May  Holland,  London,  1883. 

Oolden  thoughts  from  the  Spiritual  Guide  of  Migall  Molinos,  Preface  by  J. 
H.  Shorthouse,  London,  1883. 

Handbook  to  tlie  Woi'ks  of  Robert  Browning,  Mrs.  Sutherland  Orr,  London, 
1885. 

Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Robert  Browning,  Hiram  Corson,  LL.D.,  Bos- 
ton, 1886. 

Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Browning,  Arthur  Symons,  London,  1886. 

Browning's  Women,  Mary  E.  Burt  and  E.  E.  Hale,  Chicago,  1886. 

Christmas-Eve  and  Easter-Day  and  other  Poems,  Heloise  E.  Hersey  and 
Wm.  J.  Rolfe,  Boston,  1886. 

Select  Poems  of  Robert  Browning,  Wm.  J.  Rolfe  and  Heloise  E.  Hersey, 
N.  Y..  1887. 

Studies  in  the  Poetry  of  Robert  Broicning,  James  Fotheringham,  London, 
1887. 


PREVIOUS  PUBLICATIONS  OF  THE  SYRACUSE 
BROWNING  CLUB. 


1.  The  Constitution  of  the  Syracuse  Browning  Club,  with  a 
Sketch  of  the  Organization,  and  its  List  of  Members.  8vo,  pp. 
8,  Syracuse,  1882. 

2.  The  Syracuse  Browning  Chib.  Brief  Abstract  of  the 
Minutes  of  Seventy  Meetings,  with  Two  Papers  by  Mrs.  James  L. 
Bagg.     8vo,  pp.  20,  Syracuse,  1885. 

[The  two  papers  by  Mrs.  Bagg  are  "  Interpretation  of  Childe 
"  Roland,"  read  at  the  34th  meeting  of  the  Club,  Nov.  18,  1883  ;j 
and  "Eglamor  and  Sordello,"  read  at  the  62d  meeting  of  the' 
Club,  Dec.  17,  1884.]. 


CONTENTS. 


\  Page. 

[Faosimile  Progkamme  of  the  Meeting 8 

Beowning's  Use  of  History,  Prof.  Charles  J.  Little 9 

Aid  to  Living  from  Browning,  Mrs.  Mary  E.  Bagg 14 

Browning  as  a  Theologian,  Rev.  E.  "W.  Mundy 21 

Browning  as  an  Artist,  Mr.  E.  H.  Merrell 24 

Browning's  Philosophy,  Miss  Arria  S.  Huntington 55 

Browning  as  a  Dramatist,  Rev.  S.  R.  Calthrop 60 

Some  of  Browning's  Beliefs,  Mr.  C.  W.  Bardeen 64 

Remarks  by  Rev.  C.  DeB.  Mills Y9 

I^OTES  OF  A  Call  on  Mr.  Browning,  Mr.  C.  W.  Bardeen 91 


^A  Meeting  of  the® 

i^racuse  Sreioninflj  C(ufe 


In  Memory  of 


Died  in  Venice,  Dec.  12,  1889. 
^AY  ^EM0I\IAL  J!!!hUI^CH,    jHUR^DyW,    J^N.    9,    1890. 
■» gsgS^a       ■»■ 

GToPROGRAMMB^-ts 

Browning  as  a  Historian Rev.  Chas.  J.  Little,   D.D. 

Browning  as  a  Help  to  Living Mbs.  J.  L.  Bagg. 

Browning  as  a  Religious  Teacher Rev.  E.  W.  Mundy. 

Reading — Prospice Mbs.   E.  H.  Merrell. 

Browning  as  an  Artist Mr.  E.  H.  Merrell. 

Browning  as  a  Philosopher Miss  Arria  S.  Huntington. 

Browning  as  a  Dramatist Rev.   S.  R.  Calthbop. 

Some  of  Browning's  Beliefs Mr.   C.  W.  Bardeen. 

Reading — The  Grammarian's  Funeral Mrs,  R.  H.  Davis. 


BKOWNING'S   USE  OF  HISTORY. 


Browning  and  Tennyson  have  published  verse  chiefly,  and  His- 
tory as  ordinarily  written  is  essentially  prose.  Indeed  the  first 
appearance  of  prose  in  literature  is  where  the  epic  and  lyric 
break  down  to  quiet  narrative,  when  Homer  makes  room  for 
Herodotus  and  J^schylus  for  Thucydides.  A  poet's  treatment  of 
history  must  therefore  be  judged  by  the  canons  of  his  art.  He 
creates  for  us  a  life  or  an  epoch,  illuminating  some  coil  and 
cluster  of  human  activities  by  the  rhythmic  speech  which  dis- 
closes to  us  motive  and  emotion  and  reveals  the  hidden  laws  of 
being,  from  which  there  is  for  none  of  us,  escape. 

Hence  to  the  poet,  the  past  is  either  like  the  valley  of  dry 
bones  into  which  Ezekiel  came,  the  breath  of  life  upon  his  lips, 
or  a  world  of  mere  suggestions  out  of  which  he  shapes  images, 
which  corresponding  exactly  to  no  realities  of  history  are  yet 
of ter  truer  than  the  unilluminated  fact;  more  truthful  just  as  cer- 
tain experiments  of  the  laboratory  are  more  truthful  than  the 
phenomena  of  nature  unassisted,  in  that  they  bring  us  nearer  to 
the  laws  for  which  all  science  seeks. 

Now  in  his  treatment  of  historic  fact  Mr.  Browning  was  both 
prophet  and  creator.  Sometimes,  for  instance  in  ICing  Victor 
and  King  Charles  he  simply  raised  forgotten  dead  to  life; 
sometimes  in  the  glow  of  his  powerful  mind  the  miracle  of  the 
fiery  furnace  is  wrought  before  our  eyes  and  there  appears  a  form 
nobler  and  diviner  than  any  committed  to  the  flames.  Balaus- 
tion  for  example  is  such  an  apparition  amid  the  realities  of 
ruined  Athens;  an  apparition  serenely  (why  should  I  shrink 
from  the  Hellenic  word),  divinely  beautiful.     And  only  by  her 


10  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYKACU8E   BROWNLNG   CLUB. 

intervention  is  it  possible  for  the  Poet  to  place  Aristophanes  be- 
fore us  in  a  radiance  sufficient  to  disclose  the  startling  convolu- 
tions of  his  character.  This  poetic  glorification  of  historic  fact 
compares  with  the  dull  and  lustreless  chronicle  as  the  diamond 
compares  with  the  common  forms  of  carbon ;  this  is  fact 
wrought  to  its  highest  potency,  no  longer  inert  and  opaque  but 
alive  with  light  and  flashing  with  ever  new  suggestion. 

When  Mr.  Browning  aimed  at  reproduction  merely,  he  spared 
no  pains  to  discover  the  exact  reality  ;  musty  chronicles  and  for- 
gotten memoirs  were  studied  with  antiquarian  zest  and  every  de- 
tail noted.  But  his  interest  in  history  was  in  the  disclosure  and 
development  of  character ;  to  use  his  own  words  he  counted 
nothing  worthy  of  study  but  the  incidents  in  the  history  of  a 
soul.  Yet  he  was  too  great  a  scholar,  too  deep  a  thinker,  and 
too  much  the  child  of  his  age  not  to  perceive  the  correlation  of 
souls,  the  imprisonment  of  men  in  their  environment,  the  clash 
of  individual  life  with  stubborn  and  hostile  circumstance;  too 
great  an  artist  not  to  take  advantage  of  the  immense  variety  of 
back-ground  which  history  would  furnish  for  his  men  and 
women,  caught  in  the  hour  and  article  of  self-revelation. 

So  we  have  Italy  presented  in  Sordelto,  in  Luria,  in  the  S<TuVs 
Tragedy^  in  the  Ring  and  the  Boole;  Athens  and  Hellenic  life 
in  Balaustion  and  Aristophanes  with  a  richness  of  detail,  a  ful- 
ness of  learning,  a  minuteness  of  erudite  knowledge  which  sur- 
prises and  delights,  and  all  held,  for  the  most  part,  in  due  subor- 
dination to  the  characters  which  live  and  move  before  us. 

Strafford  is  remarkable  for  the  care  bestowed  upon  each  person 
of  the  drama  ;  Paracelsus  on  the  other  hand  for  the  skill  with 
which  the  heart  of  the  real  man's  mystery  has  been  plucked  out 
and  glorified.  In  the  English  play  all  that  could  heighten  the 
spectator's  interest  in  character  or  plot  has  been  discovered  and 
made  use  of;  if  it  fails  to  be  history  illuminated  and  trans- 
formed as  a  historic  drama  ought  to  be,  it  is  because  the  central 
figures  are  hardly  of  colossal  mould.     Yet  possibly  it  is  the  per- 


I^KOi'.    LITTLE   ON   BROWNINg's   USE   OF    HISTORY.  11 

spective  of  the  historian  which  makes  them  seem  so  great  and 
the  Poet  has  after  all,  only  reduced  them  to  life  size. 

Mr.  Browning  has  been  cosmopolitan  and  catholic  in  his  selec- 
tion of  historical  characters,  and  singularly  free  from  bias  and 
prejudice  of  every  kind.  And  there  again  the  Poet  proves  him- 
self more  truthful  than  the  partisan  historian.  Take  for  in- 
stance Mr.  Browning's  delineatioH  of  Italian  character  and 
contrast  it  with  the  paradox  expounded  so  brilliantly  in  Lord 
Macaulay's  Essay  upon  Machiavelli.  The  land  of  Dante  and 
Yittoria  Colonna,  of  Manzoni  and  Silvio  Pellico  and  Mazzini  has 
found  no  nobler  defence  than  in  the  immortal  picture  of  An- 
tonio Pignatelli,  called  Innocent  XII.  Though  I  must  speak 
with  hesitation  here,  since  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  refers  to 
Mr.  Browning's  portrait  as  a  truthful  and  powerful  sketch  of 
Innocent  XI.,  who  was  quite  another  man,  though  also  great  and 
good.  For  all  that,  the  sketch  is  a  faithful  portrait  of  a  great 
and  pious  pope  who  lived  a  very  noble  life  and  stood  for  Christ 
among  his  fellow-men.  Mr.  Browning  himself  spoke  too  much  per- 
haps through  his  characters,  making  them  givehis  thought  rather 
than  their  own  ;  he  possesses  them  when  he  ought  to  be  possessed 
by  them :  a  defect  which  is  especially  noticeable  in  a  character 
taken  from  the  historic  world.  But  making  every  abatement 
which  the  truth  requires,  one  may  say  without  extravagance  that 
no  writer  of  our  age  has  known  more  about  the  men  and  times 
of  which  he  gave  us  pictures.  Again  there  are  indications 
everywhere  but  especially  in  the  minor  poems,  of  a  knowledge, 
rich  and  various  of  which  his  published  work  is  only  the  outer 
crust,  however  rich  in  precious  things.  Who  that  studies  the 
picture  of  l^lapoleon  given  us  in  the  Incident  in  the  French 
Camp  does  not  wish  that  we  had  a  Napoleon  in  Exile  by  the 
same  master  hand  ?  But  it  was  characteristic  of  Mr.  Browning 
to  shun  the  over-treated  figures  of  history.  These  did  not 
seem  to  him  to  be  the  makers  of  epochs  after  all.  "  God's 
"  puppets  best  and  worst  are  we  ;  there  are  no  last  nor  first." 


12  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

This  truth  so  deeply  felt  by  him  kept  his  thoughts  from  popu- 
lar idols  and  inspired  him  to  the  representation  of  the  nobly  done 
and  ignobly  forgotten,  of  the  bravely  suffered  and  inadequately 
praised.  Like  Carlyle  he  had  a  quick  mind  for  the  anecdote 
which  discloses  the  nature  of  a  soul ;  and  knew  how  to  seize  and 
shape  it  into  enduring  form.  He  did  not  always  hunt  these  to 
their  sources,  that  he  might  verify  them.  Nor  was  he  as  poet 
bound  to.  But  the  number  of  these  allusions  is  legion  and  they 
break  out  everywhere.  Right  in  the  midst  of  the  Statue  and 
the  Bust  leaps  out  a  passage  from  an  ancient  chronicle ;  Peter  of 
Abano  closes  with  a  story  from  Suetonius  never  dreamed  worth 
quoting  till  Browning  saw  its  deep  significance.  Chronicle  and 
memoir  were  fluent  in  his  mind,  or  rather  floated  in  fragments 
to  be  poured  out  with  the  molten  thought. 

Finally  let  me  note  that  though  Mr.  Browning  attempted  in  the 
maturity  of  his  powers,  the  delineation  of  a  great  epoch  only  once, 
he  achieved  it  perfectly.  The  Rome  of  Innocent  XII.  hardly  gave 
him  a  great  epoch  ;  Strafford  was  an  earlier  work  and  Sordello  a  res- 
olute and  wilful  struggle  with  the  impossible.  But  Aristophanes'' 
Apology  is  more  nearly  the  Athens  of  the  Peloponnesian  War 
than  Schiller's  William  Tell  is  the  Switzerland  of  Gessler.  And 
how  vastly  more  difficult  the  task  of  the  English  poet.  How 
easy  to  describe  the  hunters  and  shepherds  of  the  Alps  !  How 
bewildering  the  varied  strength  and  splendor  of  Hellenic  life ! 
Nor  is  the  picture  surface  merely.  Pictorial  history  here  becomes 
reflective  and  philosophical.  That  which  is  elsewhere  expressed 
dimly  in  hints  and  glints,  shines  forth  here  without  obstructing 
cloud.  The  poet  with  a  subtlety  that  Carneades  might  envy 
defends  but  does  not  exculpate  the  great  comedian ;  extenuates 
but  will  not  justify ;  holds  him  as  appointed  leader  to  the  task  of 
leadership ;  demands  of  him  conduct  steadied  by  his  conscience, 
and  traces  with  a  master  thinker's  craft  the  ruin  of  the  city  to 
"  the  pipings  and  dancings,  the  greetings  and  the  guzzling  "  which 
Aristophanes  was  fain  to  believe  could  ''  build  Athenai  to  the 
"  skies  once  more." 


PROF.    LITTLE   ON   BROWNINg's    USE   OF   HISTORY.  13 

"  For  the  very  day  Euripides  was  born 

"  Those  flute  girls — Phaps-Elaphion  at  their  head — 

"  Did  blow  their  best,  did  dance  their  worst,  the  while 

"  Sparte  pulled  down  the  walls,  wrecked  wide  the  work, 

"  Laid  low  each  merest  molehill  of  defence, 

"  And  so  the  Power,  Athenai,  passed  away  !  " 

But  this  crash  of  Athens  into  an  immortal  wreck — 
Who  has  told  it  for  us  with  wiser  comment  or  in  a  nobler  strain  ? 

Charles  J.  Little. 


AID  TO  LIVING  FEOM  BROWNING. 


This  many-sided  poet  has  also  his  practical  side,  his  deep  con- 
cern being  to  present  a  "  theory  of  life,"  and  to  offer  a  gospel 
which  reconciles  to  life's  insoluble  problems.  Taking  the  world 
as  it  is,  and  asking  of  it  not  more  than  it  can  give,  "  he  dwells 
ever  in  a  high  calm."  His  philosophy  makes  impossible  frantic 
activities,  Quixotic  crusades,  and  hysteric  wails.  Always  we  are 
reminded  that  to-day's  mis-carriage  and  pain  issues  in  to-mor- 
row's wisdom.  To  be  patient  and  to  be  calm  must  be  the  mood 
of  the  optimist. 

Browning's  view  of  the  nature  of  man  is  based  upon  a  wide 
study  of  individual  man  and  of  the  race,  in  their  successive  stages 
of  development  from  animal,  through  the  rational,  moral  and 
spiritual.  Man  is  many  natured.  All  faculties  of  his  being  have 
their  rights,  the  delights  of  sound,  sight,  touch,  taste,  beauty, 
reverie,  imagination,  poetic  and  spiritual  ecstacy, — all  help  each, 
and  each  helps  all  to  the  harmonious  development  of  the  com- 
plete man ;  so  may  the  earth-man  live  the  earth-life  with  due 
recognition  of  the  spiritual  nature,  and  the  spiritual  man  live 
the  spiritual  life  with  due  recognition  of  the  earthly  nature. 
Browning  emphasizes  the  value,  significance,  dignity,  and  rights 
of  flesh.  Body  is  soul's  tool,  agent,  medium,  through  which 
come  man's  experience ;  it  is  soul's  aid  or  hinderance,  and  soul's 
shield  and  pleasure  house.  And  "  pleasant  is  the  flesh."  The 
joy  of  physical  existence  is  jubilantly  chanted  in  David's  song 
before  Saul, 

"  How  good  is  man's  life,  the  mere  living !  How  fit  to  employ 
"  All  the  heart,  and  the  soul,  and  the  senses,  forever  in  joy ! 
"  Oh !  our  manhood's  prime  vigor  !  " 

(14) 


MES.    BAGG   ON   AID   TO    LIVING   FROM    BROWNING.  15 

"  Let  US  not  always  say,  '  spite  of  this  flesh  I  strove,  made  head, 
"gained  ground  upon  the  whole.'  As  the  bird  wings  and  sings, 
"  let  us  cry  ; — '  all  good  things  are  ours,  nor  soul  helps  flesli  more, 
"  now,  than  flesh  helps  soul.'  " 

He  who  accords  all  honor  and  reverence  to  man's  body,  may 
be  expected  to  insist  on  the  sanctity  of  things  near  ;  and  our  poet 
mourns  that  "  too  much  life  here  has  been  walled  about  with 
"  disgrace."  He  would  have  a  man,  a  man  while  here,  "  with  all 
"his  heart  and  soul  throwing  himself  on  the  present."  Wait 
for  some  trancendent  life  reserved  by  Fate  to  follow  this?  O! 
never  !  "  Life  here  and  now,  gives  ample  opportunity  for  all 
"  manly,  brave  and  beneficent  beginnings."  It  is  "  no  mean  stage 
"  too  narrow  for  our  wide  performance  ;  " — we  are  too  little  to 
enact  the  parts  we  are  able  to  conceive.  "Where  is  the  man 
"  who  has  shown  himself  too  great  for  earth  and  human  life,  with 
"  its  many  and  complex  needs  ?  " 

A  noble  conception  of  life's  consummation  should  save  from 
contempt  its  beginning.  Earthly  experiences  are  not  simply  to 
be  tolerated,  endured, — they  are  the  dignified ;  and  as  "  God 
"joys  in  the  uncouth  joy  of  the  incomplete  world,  so  man  may 
"  take  a  pleasure  in  his 

"  Half  reasons,  faint  aspirings,  dim 

"  Struggles  for  truth,  his  poorest  fallacies, 

"  Prejudice,  and  fears,  and  cares,  and  doubts, 

"  Which  all  touch  on  nobleness  despite 

"  Their  error ;  all  tend  upwardly,  though  weak, 

•'  Like  plants  in  mines  which  never  saw  the  sun, 

"  But  dream  of  him,  and  guess  where  he  may  be, 

"And  do  their  best  to  climb  and  get  to  him." 

Man's  concern  is  with  to-day.  To  live  overmuch  in  tlie  future 
is  to  sacrifice  the  present  and  so  peril  that  future;  as  unwise  as 
to  "  weur  furry  garments  in  Italy  in  preparation  for  a  residence 
"in  Russia.''  Man  loses  the  joy  that  belongs  to  the  physical 
when  he  attempts  to  discount  the  delights  of  the  spiritual.     Our 


16  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

poet  enjoins  to  be  satisfied  with  earth's  knowledge,  experiences 
and  insights,  leaving  for  the  next  life  the  lessons  that  can  be 
learned  there  only.  "  It  is  not  for  man  to  snatch  fire  from  heaven. 
"  Earthly  lamps,  and  so  much  fire  as  sun  vouchsafes,  he  may 
"  have  to  walk  by." 

"  And  what  is  this  life's  purpose  ? 

"  To  learn  earth  first,  discover  Will,  Power,  Love, 

"  Below,  then  seek  law's  confirmation  above." 

On  earth  hegins  man's  spiritual  evolution.  This  is  not  a  world 
of  finalities.  The  perfect  life  of  the  spirit  is  not  attainable  here, 
and  the  absolute  religious  truth  is  not  attainable  here.  Man's 
approximations  to  absolute  truth,  his  creeds  and  formulations  are 
as  tabernacles, — never  homes.  Every  living  soul  outgrows  the 
spiritual  house  it  has  built, — its  successive  shelters  being  but  for 
a  night's  tarry  on  the  journey  of  many  stops  and  many  starts  and 
no  arrival. 

And  of  life's  activities,  the  poet  says,  "  To  live  and  learn,  not 
"  first  learn  and  then  live,  is  our  concern  ;  to  act  to-day,  learning 
"  thereby  to  act  to-morrow."  To  tarry  for  fulness  of  love,  or 
completeness  of  knowledge,  or  perfectness  in  aim  is  to  "  see  never 
"  the  time  and  the  place."  This  is  life's  business ; — with 
to-day's  rude  tool  and  to-day's  awkward  hand  to  do  to-day's 
common  task.  To-morrow  brings  the  sharper  tool,  the  nimbler 
hand  and  the  grander  work.  Browning  has  little  patience  with 
the  inert,  the  supine,  the  procrastinating.  He  has  all  patience 
with  crudity  in  the  statue,  coarseness  in  the  picture,  unripeness  in 
the  thought,  clumsiness  in  the  deed,  so  these  be  the  expression  of 
the  artificer's  highest  ideal.  "  Trusting  his  feeble,  fullest  sense," 
he  would  have  "  man  contend  to  the  uttermost  for  his  life's  set 
"  prize,  be  it  what  it  will ;  for  the  sin  of  each  frustrate  ghost  is 
"  the  unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt  loin."  "  So  shall  the  soul  declare 
"  itself  by  the  thing  it  does.  Be  hate  that  fruit  or  love  that 
"fruit,  it  forwards  the  general  deed  of  man  ;  and  each  of  the 
"  many,  helps  to  recruit  the  life  of  the  race  by  a  general  plan  ; 
"  each  living  his  own  to  boot."     "  Thus  man  works  his  proper 


MRS.    BAGG   ON    AID   TO    LIVING    FROM    BROWNING.  17 

"  nature  out,  and  ascertains  his  rank  and  final  place  ;  "  and  "  just 
"  the  creature  he  was  bound  to  be,  he  will  hecome,  nor  thwart  at 
"all  God's  purpose  in  creation." 

Of  man's  work,  the  poet  asks 

"  So,  all  men  strive  and  who  succeeds? 

"  Look  at  the  end  of  work,  contrast 

"  The  petty  Done,  the  Undone  vast, 

"  This  present  witli  the  hopeful  past. 

"  What  hand  and  brain  went  ever  paired  ? 

"  What  heart,  alike  conceived  and  dared  ? 

"  What  act  proved  all  its  thought  had  been  ? 

"  What  will  but  felt  the  fleslily  screen  ?  " 
"  Yet  the  will's  somewhat !  "  "  A  man's  reach  should  be  beyond 
"  his  grasp  "  :  and  "  if  this  life  gave  all,  what  were  there  to  look 
"forward  to?"  Earth  is  the  place  for  attempt — "anon  per- 
"  formance."  And  this  "  stops  my  despair.  'Tis  not  what  man 
"does,  that  exalts  him,  but  what  he  would  do."  "What  I 
"  aspired  to  be,  and  was  not,  comforts  me ;  a  brute  I  might  have 
"been,  but  would  not  sink  in  the  scale."  And  so,  "  I  live,  go 
"through  the  world,  try,  prove,  reject,  prefer,  still  struggling  to 
"  effect  my  warfare ;  happy  that  I  can  be  thwarted  as  a  man ; 
"  not  left  in  God's  contempt  apart,  with  ghastly  smooth  life,  dead 
«  at  heart." 

Who  shall  say  of  his  fellow,  "  he  has  failed  "  ? 
"  That  low  man  seeks  a  little  thing  to  do, 

"  Sees  it  and  does  it ; 
"  This  high  man  with  a  great  thing  to  pursue, 

"  Dies  ere  he  knows  it. 
"  That,  has  the  world  here — 
"  This,  throws  himself  on  God,  and  unperplexed, 

"  Seeking,  shall  find  Him  ; 
"  God's  task,  to  make  the  heavenly  period 

"  Perfect  the  earthen." 
What  is  success  and  what  failure  ? 


18  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

"  Now  who  shall  arbitrate  ? 

"  Ten  men  love  what  I  hate, 

"  Shun  what  I  follow,  slight  what  I  receive : 

"  Ten  who  in  eyes  and  ears 

"  Match  me  ;  they  all  surmise, 

"  They,  this  thing,  and  I  that, 

"  Whom  shall  my  soul  believe?  " — 
for  "  our  human  speech  is  naught,  our  testimony  false,  our  fame 
"and  human  estimation,  words  and  wind."  Men's  standards  dif- 
fer each  from  each,  and  all  differ  from  the  absolute  and  unknown 
standard  by  which  lives  might  be  rightly  judged.  Then  too, 
men  never  gather  all  the  facts.  It  has  been  said  that,  "  this  life 
"  being  but  a  small  part  of  life,  men  should  know  of  the  rest  be- 
"fore  they  can  say  of  this  portion,  that  it  is  failure  or  success." 
The  perfect  judgment  waits  God's  time,  who  knows  all  from  the 
beginning.  Man,  who  "  sees  light,  half  shine,  half  shade,"  looks 
"  to  the  size  of  things  done  that  have  their  price  here,"  the  vul- 
gar mass  called  work ;  the  low  world  can  value  in  a  trice,  plumb 
with  its  coarse  thumb  ;  God  holds  appraising  in  his  hollow  palm, 
the  seed  of  act,  thoughts  hardly  to  be  packed  into  a  narrow  act, 
fancies  that  broke  through  language  and  escaped  ;  all  instincts 
immature,  all  purposes  unsure,  that  weighed  not  as  his  work, 
yet  swelled  the  man's  account.  "All  he  could  never  be,  all  men 
"  ignored,  this  was  he  worth  to  God  whose  wheel  the  pitcher 
"  shaped." 

For  the  deformed,  idiotic,  stunted,  limp,  and  ignorant,  whom 
men  call  "  foolish,"  Browning  has  infinite  patience  and  hope ; 
all  are  backward  scholars  waiting  the  Great  Teacher.  And 
for  the  hateful,  noxious,  the  morally  insane  whom  men  call 
"  wicked,"  he  has  infinite  patience  and  hope, — for  the  little  half- 
completed  castaway  who  was  so  much  worse  than  herself;  for  "  Ot- 
"  tima,  the  temptress,  magnificent  in  sin  "  ;  for  Guido,  chief  of 
villains, — all  wait  the  "  touch  of  God's  shadow  wherein  is  heal- 
"ing."  The  worst  man  has  something  that  links  him  on  to 
humanity,  "  some  germ  of  good,  that  may  grow  to  choke  out  the 


MRS.    BAGG    ON    AID   TO    LIVING    FKOM    BROWNING.  19 

''poisonous,  rank  growth  of  a  life-time."  Quickening,  soul- 
kindling,  conversion  "  may,  will  come  to  all,  by  God's  own  ways 
"occult."  Some  suddenness  of  fate  may  cleave  the  flesh,  give 
issue  to  the  spirit  birth:  some  lightning-stroke  may  cure  the  blind; 
God's  spear  may  pierce  a  window  in  the  soul,  whence  the  im- 
prisoned flash  shall  leap  and  find  itself  at  one  with  God's  own 
SUM — "  Else  I  avert  my  face,  nor  penetrate  into  that  sad,  ob- 
"  scure,  sequestered  place,  where  God  unmakes,  but  to  remake 
"  the  soul,  he  else  made  first  in  vain." 

And  has  earth  no  hope  for  such  ?  Elisha  raised  the  dead — "  a 
"credible  feat  enough,"  our  poet  says,  "  Man  may  not  create^ — 
•'he  may  restore;  a  virgin  wick  he  cannot  light,  the  almost- 
"  dead  lamp  he  may  relume." 

"  Such  men  are  even  now  upon  the  earth, 

"  Serene  amid  the  half -formed  creatures  round, 

"  Who  should  be  saved  by  them,  and  joined  with  them." 

Through  Christ-like  souls  is  "  man  born  from  above,"  or  through 
higher  personality  ;  and  through  such  souls  alone,  God  stooping 
shows  sufficient  of  His  light  for  us  in  the  dark  to  rise  by.  "  By 
man,  shall  man  be  '  lifted  to  his  level,'  "  made  cognizant  of  the  mas- 
ter," see  his  true  "  function  revealed,"  and  "  be  admitted  to  a 
fellowship  with  the  soul  of  things." 

In  a  world  of  failure,  loss,  pain,  decay  and  imperfection,  our 
poet  iinds  sufficient  consolation  for  life  as  it  is,  and  for  man  as  he 
is,  .n  the  thought  that  "  man  is  made  to  grow,  not  stop  ;  "  "  what 
''  comes  to  perfection  perishes  ;  "  "  what's  whole  can  increase  no 
"  more,  is  dwarfed  and  dies,  since  here's  its  sphere."  "  Progress 
"is  man's  distinction,  man's  alone,  not  God's  and  not  the  beasts. 
"  God  is,  they  are, — man  partly  is,  and  wholly  hopes  to  be." 

"  God's  gift  is  that  man  shall  conceive  of  truth, 
"And  yearn  to  gain  it,  catching  at  mistake, 
"  As  midway  help  till  he  reach  fact  indeed." 


20  MEMORIAL    MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING  CLUB. 

Every  sorrow,  loss  and  pain  yields  "  increase  of  knowledge, 
"  since  lie  learns  because  he  lives,  which  is  to  be  a  man,  set  to 
"  instruct  himself  by  his  past  self."  Rejoice,  "  that  man  is  hurled 
"  from  change  to  change  unceasingly,  his  soul's  wings  never 
furled." 

What  end  to  the  striving  ?  "  To  reach  the  ultimate,  angel's  law, 
"  indulging  every  instinct  of  the  soul,  there,  where  law,  life,  joy, 
"  impulse  are  one  thing." 

Mary  E.  Bagg. 


BROWNING  AS  A  THEOLOGIAN. 


In  the  study  of  Browning  the  chief  thing  is  not  criticism  or 
defence  of  his  teachings,  but  a  careful  understanding  of  what  he 
has  to  say.  And  it  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  understand 
a  man  who  is  on  a  level  above  the  student.  It  is  specially  diffi- 
cult to  be  entirely  fair  in  questions  of  theology,  because  theology 
is  so  related  to  religion  that  thought  and  feeling  are  both  involved. 
And  while  the  attractiveness  of  feeling  is  in  the  local  or  personal 
color  which  it  gives  to  thought,  that  attraction  causes  the  needle 
of  truth  to  vary  from  its  accuracy  of  direction. 

But  beyond  this,  it  is  to  be  said  of  Browning  that  he  is  not  a 
theologian  and  therefore  has  not  a  theology.  He  is  a  deeply 
religious  poet.  His  entire  writings  all  full  of  religious  thought 
and  feeling.  A  theologian  is  a  logician.  Browning  is  a  poet,  a 
seer.  He  is  comprehensive.  He  embraces  everything  in  his 
vision  and  in  his  description.  There  is  nothing  of  the  exclusive- 
ness  of  the  theologian  in  his  utterances.  As  to  the  artist,  so  to 
him,  everything  is  of  interest  and  service.  He  lays  the  entire 
universe  under  contribution  to  his  page.  He  seems  to  see,  as  it 
is  said  in  Genesis  the  creator  saw,  that  all  things  are  good.  He 
believes  in  everything.  The  one  passport  to  his  favor  is  that  a 
thing  is. 

There  is  no  scientific  theological  statement  possible  of  the  sys- 
tem of  such  a  writer.  You  can  prove  anything  from  him.  He 
seems  to  have  learned  what  Emerson  teaches,  that  the  whole 
truth  is  not  spoken  until  the  opposite  has  been  affirmed.  It  is 
impossible  for  a  logical  system  to  hold  contradictory  statements. 
Seers  always  speak  contradictions.  Hence  there  are  numberless 
opinions  concerning  Browning's  theology.     In  that  regard,  how- 

(21) 


2^  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

ever,  he  shares  the  fate  of  many  clear-seeing  men  and  of  the 
writers  of  the  New  Testament. 

Browning  seems  to  hold  the  fundamental  doctrines  of  Christi- 
anity, and  to  interpret  them  as  the  eternal  principles  of  existence. 
While  he  accepts  the  christian  theology  he  makes  all  truths  to  be 
of  universal  application.  He  is  properly  a  christian  because  he 
believes  in  God,  believes  irt  the  Incarnation  and  believes  in  Im- 
mortality. The  poems  Christmas  Eve^  Easter-Day^  Saul^  and 
others  teach  these  doctrines  with  great  distinctness. 

But  these  christian  doctrines  are  not  held  by  Browning  in  the 
narrow  and  exclusive  fashion  of  any  church  or  sect.  They  are 
in  his  statement  of  them  thoroughly  inclusive.  His  Incarnation 
is  not  an  event  in  which  the  divine  power  or  the  divine  love  is 
exhausted.  The  divine  power,  and  the  divine  love  were  before 
the  historical  Incarnation,  are  now,  and  ever  shall  be.  Christ  is 
not  merely  the  divine  form,  he  is  the  divine  qualities. 

Or  possibly  it  would  more  clearly  state  Browning's  thought  to 
say  that  the  Incarnation  is  to  him  not  a  solitary  fact  putting  God 
into  a  new  relation  with  his  creation,  but  that  it  is  a  fact  which 
illustrates  the  eternal  relation  of  God  to  the  Universe.  He 
seems  to  think  that  it  was  not  an  expedient  devised  to  remedy  a 
defect,  but  that  it  is  one  exemplification  of  the  permanent  relation 
of  God  to  all  things. 

As  a  consequence  of  this  view,  he  says  little  of  the  historic  In- 
carnation. Christ  to  him  is  the  God  in  human  form  who  was  such 
from  the  beginning  and  ever  shall  be  such.  In  his  essay  on 
'Shelly,  Browning  says  that  Shelly  accepted  Christianity  but 
denied  its  historic  bases.  It  might  be  said  of  Browning  that  he 
accepts  Christianity,  but  gives  little  attention  to  its  historic  bases. 

His  doctrine  of  Immortality  seems  in  like  manner  to  be  no 
artificial  system  of  adjustments,  no  mechanical  arrangement  of 
pleasures  and  pains,  but  the  eternal  order  of  things,  insured  to 
us  not  by  promises  and  statutes,  but  by  the  nature  of  existence, 
by  the  necessities  of  the  divine  love. 


EEV.  ME.  MIINDY   ON    BPwOWNING   AS    A   THEOLOGIAN.  23 

Browning's  idea  of  God  seems  to  be  that  he  is  all-powerful, 
all-wise,  and  all-good.  And  in  such  a  supreme  he  finds  assurance 
of  the  excellence  of  all  that  is.  He  believes  therefore  in  the 
universe,  he  is  wholly  at  ease  concerning  the  origin,  present  state, 
and  destiny  of  all  persons  and  things,  he  sees  that  love  and  wisdom 
are  everywhere  and  he  is  therefore  content.  To  him  God  is  "  all 
and  in  all."  Hence  to  him  every  atom  and  every  person  of  the 
universe  is  essential  to  the  universe  and  performs  its  function  in 
the  universe.  Popes,  priests,  saints,  fair  women,  brave  men, 
cowards,  hypocrites,  murderers,  princes,  beggars,  thieves,  every 
human  being  seems  to  appeal  equally  to  his  careful  interest.  He 
gives  such  attention  to  the  imperfect  in  life  that  one  able  critic 
characterizes  him  as  the  master  of  the  grotesque  in  poetry.* 

The  opposites  good  and  evil,  pleasure  and  pain,  holiness  and 
sin,  the  finite  and  infinite  seem  in  his  thought  to  be  but  different 
aspects  of  the  same  thing.  Opposites  to  liim  make  one.  With 
such  perceptions,  the  old  theological  problems  vanish,  all  life  is 
one,  and  Browning  regards  existence  not  as  a  critic  to  judge  it 
but  as  a  seer  to  observe  it.  E.  W.  Mdndy. 

*See   Bagehot  on  "Wordsworth,  Tennyson  and  Browning." 


BROWNING  AS  AN  ARTIST. 


"  The  course  of  Nature  is  the  art  of  God." 

"  In  ancient  days  the  name  of  prophet  and  of  poet^  was  the 
"  same." 

Browning  though  of  exceeding  fertility  and  versatility  of 
genius,  and  so  profoundly  acquainted  with  the  history,  and  sym- 
pathetic with  the  development  of  every  fine  art  as  to  have 
obtained  intuition  of  its  origin,  motive  and  function,  and 
prescience  of  its  future,  was  yet  not  like  Buonarotti,  poet,  painter, 
sculptor,  architect,  and  statesman  all  in  one,  nor,  though  musician, 
was  he  composer.  His  only  art  was  the  art  par  excellence,  and 
even  in  this  his  productive  activity  did  not  extend  to  its  every 
branch. 

Wherefore  in  speaking  of  him  as  artist,  productions  belong- 
ing to  diverse  spheres  have  not  to  be  contrasted,  nor,  since  it  de- 
volves upon  another  to  tell  what  he  has  done,  in  that  form  of 
poetry  in  which  if  a  man  be  great,  he  is  also  lyrist  and  might 
have  written  an  epic,  would  there  seem  call  to  speak  of  him  as 
poet,  otherwise  than  in  reference  to  how  far  as  such  he  was 
artist ;  but  the  degree  in  which  one  might  be  poet  without  being 

*  The  poet,  is  one  "  Who  with  a  man  is  equal,  be  he  any  won- 
"  drous  thing  'twixt  ape  and  Plato,"  is  dower'd  with  the  scorn  of 
"  scorn,  the  hate  of  hate  and  love  of  love,"  is  "  as  a  nerve  o'er 
"  which  do  creep  the  else-unfelt  oppressions  of  this  earth,"  to 
whom  "  nihil  humani  alienum  est,^  and  "  a  man's  a  man  for  a' 
"  that:' 

(24) 


ME.    MERKELL   ON   BROWNING    AS   AN   ARTIST.  25 

artist  is  zero, — poetic  artist  defines  poet^, — and  of  Browning  as 
artist  of  any  other  sort  what  ground  of  impression? 

As  fitting  as  it  is  in  most  cases  to  confer  on  a  literary  man, 
having  effectively  presented  various  subject-matters,  designations 
of  which  the  word  artist  forms  part,  e.  g.,  psychological  artist, 
historical,  philosophical  and  the  like,  yet  some  scruple  would 
seem  in  place  in  case  of  his  having  adopted  verse  as  his  sole 
means  of  expression  ;  and  let  Browning  have  brought  home  to 
us  truths  of  as  various  orders,  as  much  soul-lore,  recondite  his- 
tory, and  ultimate  philosophy,  as  he  may,  still  95,000  lines  of 
verse  and  no  prose  to  speak  of,  forbid  our  looking  upon  him  as 
artist  if  we  may  not  as  poet. 

No  form  of  expression  is  too  choice  for  veritable  philosophy, 
but  verse  is  proper  only  to  one  whom  perception  of  the  harmony 
that  is  and  shall  be  compels  to  its  use,  who  in  spite  of  all  the 
appearance  to  the  contrary,  sees  reason  for  singing,  sees  even 
that  in  the  midst  of  death  we  are  in  life  and  that  romance  is 
real.  2 

It  founds  no  claim  to  the  exercise  of  art,  in  some  moment  of 
release  from  limitation,  to  produce  a  genuine  poem,  develop  a 
melody  or  harmony,  or  have  grow  under  the  hand  some  ideal 
shape.  These  things  are  for  comfort  to  souls  grieving  over  in- 
ability to  produce  any  fair  or  wonderous  thing,  as  testifying  to 
the  equal  potentiality  in  us  all,  but  art  is  far  from  these  happen- 
ings and  more  than  merely  well-directed  effort. 

If,  now,  writing  verse  more  than  half  a  century,  of  sound 
mind  in  sound  body,  in  not  the  straitest  circumstances,  all  gal- 
leries of  art,  libraries  and  circles  of  society  open  to  him,  with  a 

^ '•'•  Mediocribus   (not   artists)    esse  poetis non    concessere 

"  coluTTinaeP 

^  "  Does  but  speak  because  he  must,"  sings  "  as  linnets  sing  " 
hymns  unbidden,  "  Till  the  world  is  wrought  to  sympathy  with 
"  hopes  and  fears  it  heedeth  not." 


26  MEMORIAL    MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING  CLUB. 

"lyric  love,  half  angel  and  half  bird,"  for  wife^,  there  lay  be- 
fore us  simply  a  few  good  poems  and  any  number  of  merely 
moderate  merit,  there  would  be  little  to  say  of  Browning  as 
poetic  artist. 

But  how  different  the  real  state  of  the  case !  Even  to  the 
twenty-year-old  boy,  having  covertly  laid  his  first  gift  on  the 
altar  he  lived  to  pile  so  high,  came  the  confirmation  of  his  call 
in  these  words  of  grave  seers  inspired  of  Melpomene  and  Euterpe: 
— "  Whoever  he  is,  he  sees  the  way,  is  strong,  and  will  arrive." 
He  did  see  the  way,  saw  it  "  as  birds  their  trackless  way,"  and 
has  arrived. 

Dante  Rosetti  noted  at  once  in  Pauline  the  accents  of  a 
brother's  voice.  It  gave  that  keen  critic  Fox  the  thrill  that 
never  failed  him  as  the  test  of  genius.  "  We  felt  certain  of 
"  Tennyson  ;  we  are  not  less  certain  of  the  author  of  Pauline.''^ 

John  Foster,  unaware  whether  it  was  the  work  of  youth  or 
age,  on  reading  Paracelus^  unhesitatingly  ranked  its  author  with 
Shelley,  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth,  and,  in  Strafford  found  only 
the  inherent  nobleness  of  the  Lion  of  England,  overshadowing  to 
the  poet's  view  what  principle  made  him  its  last  hope  and  strong- 
hold; but  found  therein  no  note  failing  of  the  music  answering 
to  this  kindlier  regard  of  the  man  potential  rather  than  actual. 
Lang  finds  Browning  in  "  Heap  cassia,  sandal-buds,"  in  Par- 
acelsus, in  the  central  current  of  lyric  verse  where  Shelley  was, 
elsewhere  often  in  its  shallows,  but  no  counsel  from  its  edge, 
only  from  on  high,  could  avail  one  borne  upon  that  tide. 
Next  after  Strafford  came  Sordello  "  the  obscure  and  rugged,"  a 
poem  even  fluent  in  style  save  for  an  eddy  here  and  there,  and  as 
to  its  thought,  identical  with  that  of  a  school  of  men  than  whoip.  <^ 
none  write  plainer  prose.  Swinburne  says,  to  charge  the  illum- 
inate who  wrote  it  with  obscurity  is  about  as  accurate  as  to  call 
Lynceus  purblind. 

1  Yet  Prov.  11,  10,  and  "  Wer  nie  sein  Brot. ..."     -y 


MR.    MERRELL   ON    BROWNING    AS   AN  ARTIST.  27 

The  causes,  almost  too  obvious  to  state,  of  anything  seemingly 
peculiar  in  his  expression,  are,  that  he  would  not  resign  the 
ancient  rights  and  uses  of  poets,  revived  words  of  strong  sense 
and  clear  English  ring,  used  the  ellipses  natural  to  impassioned 
thought,  employed  the  word-order  of  the  English  language,  not 
that  of  the  present  colloquial  only,  thereby  infusing  something  of 
mood  and  relation  into  forms  that,  taken  by  themselves,  no  man 
may  say  whether  they  be  roots,  or  stems,  or  what. 

Are  they  who  wield  the  instrument  of  tliought  best,  to  have  no 
part  in  moulding  it?  Is  our  tongue  to  know  no  check  to  the 
tendency  to  which  the  philologist  Sayce  says  it  owes  its  wide 
extension,  and  fall  into  that  state  whence  result  "  intellectual 
"torpor  and  mental  confusion"  even  tTo  Celestials  unread  in  their 
classics  ? 

And  to  what  end  ?  That  we  may  boast  it  universal,  the  medium 
of  commerce^,  of  spreading  our  ideas^  amongst  peoples  the  rudi- 
ments of  whose  thought  we  have  yet  to  learn  ! 

"  If  the  red  slayer  think  he  slays,  or  if  the  slain  think  he  is 
"  slain,  they  know  not  well  the  ways  I  keep,  and  pass,  and  turn 
"  again." — Bhagavad-Gita. 

"  Whence  this  great  creation  ? . . . .  perchance  even  he  knows 
''not:'— ^  Rig- Veda. 

1  "  And  honor  sinks  where  commerce  long  prevails." 

"  Hang  up  philosophy,  "  sink  commerce,  "  hence  pageant  His- 
"  tory  !  What  care  ?     Juliet   leaning   amid   her  window-tlowers 

" Doth  more  avail  than  these,"  if  they  must  lose  us  the 

ideal. 

2  "  Nought  but  the  wide-world  story  how  the  earth  and 
"  heavens  began,  how  the  gods  are  glad  and  angry,  and  a 
"  deity  once  was  man." 

3  Nullam  rem  nilo  gigni  divinitus  unguamy  cf.  Milton. 


28  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

"  And  one  to  me  are  shame  and  fame." 

"Take^  not  this  world  in  hand  to  make  it  to  your  mind.  He 
"  that  makes,  mars.  Where  are  many  prohibitive  enactments,  the 
"  people  are  poor,  where  many  laws  and  restrictions,  thieves  mul- 
"  tiply,  where  legions  are  quartered,  thorns  and  briars  grow." 
Lao-tse,  of  whom  Confucius,  " I  know  many  things, ^  ....how 
"  birds  can  fly  and  may  be  shot,  but  I  have  seen  the  Dragon  this 
"  day  and  how  he  mounts  I  cannot  tell."  It  has  been  said  that 
Browning  combats  the  philosophy  of  the  time.  Strange  if  by 
the  word  be  meant  the  staple  from  pulpit  and  rostrum,  the  most 
unphilosophic,  unpoetic,  inartistic  medley,  ever  honored  with 
the  name. 

What  its  burden  ?  The  upholder  of  the  universe  needs  help: 
shoulders  to  the  wheel,  make  the  earth  a  dead  level.  For  princi- 
ples and  method,  read  the  great  gospels  of  absolute  ethics,  for 
motive,  appeal  to  the  feelings,  and  to  the  power  in  man  to  be  a 
devil  that  he  make  himself  a  martyr  for  the  general  good. 

"  Take  but  degree  away,  untune  that  string,  and,  hark  what 
"  discord  follows." 

On  the  one  hand  it's  hurrah  for  freedom,  idleness,  ^  and  drink, 
on  the  other,  for  regulation  on  regulation,  for  Puritanic  joys,  so- 
cial equality,  leisure,^  vegetables  and  water.  No  need  of  game 
laws  then,  of  physicians  or  vivisection. 

^  "  Pain  thee  not  each  crooked  to  redress,  in  trust  of  her  that 
"  turneth  like  a  ball.  Great  rest  standeth  in  little  business,  be- 
"  ware  also  to  spurn  an  nalle.  Strive  not  as  doth  a  crook  with 
"a  wall.  Daunt  thyself  that  dauntest  others'  deed,  and  truth 
"  shall  thee  deliver,  'tis  no  dread." 

2  Inter  alia.  "  What  you  do  not  like  wlien  done  to  yourself, 
"  do  not  to  others.  Reciprocity  is  the  rule  for  all  one's  life." 
"  Limit  your  wishes  to  the  attainable." 

3  "  The  very  fiends  weave  ropes  of  sand 
"  Rather  than  taste  pure  hell  in  idleness." 

*  For  what  ?  Every  parent  of  many  children  knows  that  few 
are  called  to  other  than  the  low  life  of-  the  most,  that  two  or 
more  must  fall  that  one  may  stand. 


MK.    MERRELL   ON   BROWNING   AS  AN  ARTIST.  29 

How  the  crops  will  ripen  in  the  sun,  how  amiably,  for  a  few 
short  hours  each  day,  men  will  contend  in  the  busy  mart,  and  how 
the  strain  on  one's  sympathies  will  relax,  when  government  takes 
land  and  trade  in  hand  and  through  her  hosts  of  good  and  faith- 
ful servants  looks  after  every  red  man  and  white  with  a  tender 
parent's  care ! 

We  shall  need  no  poets  then  but,  in  our  joy,  break  forth  one 
and  all  in  some  hymn  revised. 

Whence  danger  to  family,  state,  church,  the  many-sided  de- 
velopment of  mankind,  the  sphere  of  personal  liberty,^  whence 
encouragement  to  the  dreams  of  anarchy  ? 

From  those  who  would  set  the  world  aright,  naturally  sound 
in  head  and  heart,  but  filled  with  intentions  that  pave  "  the 
"  down  below,"  unbalanced  by  the  over-altruism  that  is  but 
self-regard  of  irritated  nerve,  till  the  voices  of  the  past  and  pres 
ent,2  the  refutation  of  their  conclusions  by  their  own  premises 
and  the  lessons  of  history,  alas,  are  of  no  account  to  them.  Whence 
the  nullity  of  the  influence  on  affairs  of  the  so-called  cultured 
class,  well-meaning  as  it  is,  and  backed  by  religion,  wealth  and 
position  ?  No  need  to  answer,  politicians,  business  men,  and  com- 
mon voters  all  know.  Whence  sympathy's  own  undoing,  its 
curdling  into  the  feeling  of  the  keeper  of  swine  for  his  herd, 
mingling  of  attachment,  disgust,  and  the  vexation  of  disappointed 
individual  view  and  will,  that  finds  but  natural  expression  in 
blue  law,  harangue,  raca,  fool,  and  even  the  armed  hand?     Moral 

1  Whose  varying  wall  to  keep,  justice,  that  clearest  thing, 
strives  with  all  her  might,  even  mother  nature  not  letting  the 
atoms  crowd.     See  W.  von  Humboldt. 

2  Yes,  of  men  living,  to  whom,  in  a  way,  we  owe  food,  warmth, 
and  lisht  and  medicine  and  most  of  the  little  now  known  of  the 
forces  and  laws  internal  and  external  to  which  we  must  adjust 
ourselves  or  die  individually  and  as  a  people.  "  That  the  many 
"  thrive,  let  them  regard  the  few,"  Homer,  Machiavelli,  et  al. 


So  MEMORIAL  MEETING,   STEACUSE  BROWNING  CLTJB. 

coBterapt^  of  those  its  function  is  to  make  us  serve,  be  served  by, 
and  the  more  enjo}",  blindness  to  the  simplest  criterion  of  dis- 
crimination between  what  we  know,  and  knowing  not,  yet  feel 
sure  of,  want  of  trust  in  Him  who  holds  the  helm,  to  wait  for 
the  slow  sure  march  of  opinion,  scientific  and  public,  to  the  truth 
that  gives  all  needed  power  for  good.^ 

What  is  requisite  to  the  appreciation  of  Sordello,  but  some  pre- 
liminary charging  of  the  memory  with  its  main  drift  and  meas- 
ure ,— for  that  unconscious  energy  to  work  upon  that  is  ever 
helping  us  to  solve  our  problems,  yet  which  can  do  nothing 
with  the  mind  a  tabula  rasa, — the  attainment  of  something  like  the 
poet's  knowledge  of  its  historical  setting,  and  the  intellectual  effort 
inevitable  for  us  in  acquiring  conceptions  that,  through  this  life, 

1  "  "Who  feels  contempt  for  any  living  thing .... 
"  Thought  with  him  is  in  its  infancy." 

*  "  Did  he  drivel,"  who  never  turned  his  back  on  life  or 
death,  let  "  whatever  is,  teach,  "  that  the  way  to  remove  abuses  is 
"  to  know  how  " — not  guess  or  force  a  guess  on  any  man — "  to 
"stand  by  the  truth  attained,  and  strive  from  dawn  through 
noonday  and  across  the  sunset  colored  waters"  to  catch  the 
gleams  of  a  more  rational  horizon  ;  that  it  is  best  to  keep  the 
whole  man  sound,  every  fibre  of  heart  and  brain ;  that  life  sym- 
metrical, worth  living  long,  comes  of  naturalness  and  degree, 
placidity  and  peace  of  mind  won  by  no  infraction  on  the  spheres 
of  others,  of  humility  and  trust — without  which  "  the  pillared 
"  firmament  were  rottenness  " — :  yet  no  balking  of  every  im- 
pulse, rousing  of  body  and  soul  to  mutual  enmity,  no  balancing 
of  abstract  right  and  wrong,  till  the  tide  has  ebbed — "  Where's 
"abstract  Right  for  me?"  "  Youth  once  gone  is  gone;  deeds 
"  let  escape  are  never  to  be  done  " — no  such  intentness  on  sav- 
ing of  the  soul  as  to  make  it  miss  life's  every  goal,  no  conjectural 
duty-doing  at  no  matter  whose  expense :  "  Held  we  fall  to  rise, 
"  are  baffled  to  fight  better.     Sleep  to  wake."     Did  he  drivel  ? 

"  There  is  an  evil  wrought  by  want  of  thought " — 
"  As  well  as  want  of  heart." 


MR.    MERRELL   ON   BROWNING    AS   AN  ARTIST.  31 

would  have  remained  far  from  us  if  left  to  our  own  creative 
imaginations,  unaided,  to  develop  ? 

Where  has  more  been  said,  by  the  timely  interchange  of  sound 
and  silence,  rise  and  fall  of  voice,  and  reckoning  on  no  more 
developed  susceptibility  to  what  can  thus  be  conveyed  than 
comes  of  having  heard  such  men  as  Raymond,  Thaxter,  and  the 
like,  who  follow  poets  as  talent,  genius?  Witliout  tlieir  aid, 
there  is  doubt  whether  we  should  sense  Shakespeare  even  to  the 
limited  extent  that  we  do. 

"  'Tis  but  a  brother's  speech 

"  "We  need,  speech  where  an  accent's  change  gives  each  the 
"  other  soul." 

It  were  well  to  learn  before  pronouncing  anything  of  Brown- 
ing's sound  without  sense,  or  neither  sound  nor  sense,  to  whom 
we  owe  it.  To  one  who'lis  master  of  the  metres  of  tongues  that 
are  dead,  and  of  many  living  that  were  like  to  have  become  jar- 
gons, by  this,  but  for  such  as  he.  One  by  whom  few  thoughts 
embodied  in  literature  or  notions  of  science  had  not  been  assimi- 
lated, and  who  making  mock  of  no  living  or  inanimate  thing, 
least  of  all  essayed  the  bewilderment  of  any  man,  whom  his 
every  familiar  asserts  both  tried  and  true,  "  a  poet  and  a  saint," 
"  the  hard  and  rarest  union  that  can  be,  next  Godhead  and 
"  humanity." 

Of  his  313  issues  between  Sordello  and  the  Ring  and  the  BooTc^ 
it  seems  superfluous  to  do  more  than  recall  to  this  audience,  tliat 
they  include  7  dramas,  averaging  over  1600  lines  each,  sustained 
hardly  without  a  break,  in  the  form  of  verse  most  diflScult  to  sus- 
tain; that  of  one  of  them  Dickens  said  he  would  liave  rather  have 
written  it  than  any  work  of  modern  times,  and  believed  from 
his  soul  there  was  no  man  living  (and  not  many  dead)  who  could 
have  produced  it;  that  of  the  remaining  307,  in  no  more  than  40 
has  any  widely-known  critic  found  any  lack  of  poetic  fancy  or 
felicity  in  its  utterance. 


32  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING    CLUB. 

"  In  the  Bing  and  the  Booh  and  to  a  great  extent  in  all  Brown- 
"  ing's  writings  we  find  what  we  have  been  accustomed  to  find 
"in  the  pages  of  Shakespeare  only."^ 

The  musicians  among  you,  at  the  first  hearing  of  many  a  master- 
piece of  classical  music,  did  not  know  whether  you  were  pleased 
or  not,  and  it  was  only  after  repeated  hearing  and  much  un- 
conscious cerebration  following  thereon,  and  perhaps  not  a  few 
efforts  at  reproduction,  that  its  unity  of  design  so  broke  upon 
you  that  you  saw  the  necessity  to  it  of  its  every  part. 

Conceive  that  between  productions  such  as  the  Bing  and  the 
Book  and  poems  like  a  Lover's  Quarrel,  One  Way  of  Love,  and 
Ln  a  Gondola,  there  is  such  relation  as  between  the  %th  Sym- 
phony of  Beethoven,  and  his  simple  yet  rare  sweet  melodies,  and 
that  not  otherwise  than  as  you  attain  to  the  appreciation  of  the 
music  can  you  rise  to  that  of  the  poem. 

It  is  the  musician's  part  to  show  in  what  poetry  other  than 
Browning's  the  effects  of  his  proper  art  are  more  wonderfully 
reproduced. 

Of  Prince  Hohenstiel  Schwangau,  Fijme  at  the  Fair,  Bed 
Cotton  Nightcap  Country,  Pacchiarotto,  Jocoseria,  another 
time. 

"The  shaft  that  slew  can  slay  not  one  of  all  the  works 
"  we  knew,  nor  death  discrown  that  many -laurelled  head."^ 

Of  the  Lnn  Album  it  has  been  said  by  one  who  knows  English 
poetry,  "  It  will  be  in  men's  mouths,  when  its  detractors'  ashes 
"  lie  in  the  dust,  and  their  opinions,  if  unearthed  by  any  painful 
"  antiquary,  looked  at  with  wonder  and  contempt." 

La  Sasiaz,  the  Two  Poets  of  Oi'osic,  Dramatic  Ldyls,  and 
Ferishta^s  Fancies,  have  done  more  than  interest  us  all. 

Parleyings  with  Certain  People  is  rich  in  examples  of  pure 
poetic  diction,  and  would  have  a  grand  result  could  its  eulogy  of 

1  Robert  Buchanan. 
'  Swinburne. 


MR.    MERRELL   ON    BROWNING    AS   AN  ARTIST.  33 

Bernard  de  Mandeville  lead  any  large  number  of  us  to  look  into 
the  pages  of  tlie  old  self-knower  and  see  what  manner  of  men  and 
women  we  are. 

As  to  renderings  from  the  Greek.  JN^one  is  pronounced  more 
perfect  than  our  artist's  of  the  Alkestis.  Prof.  Mahaffj  consid- 
ers his  hand  matchless  in  conveying  tlie  deeper  spirit  of  the 
Greek  poets,  that  he  has  given  a  perfectly  faithful  idea  of  Herak- 
les,  done  the  odes  into  adequate  metre,  and  reproduced  with 
OTMtfr  art  the  special  Euripidean  feature;  that  his  version  of  the 
Agamemnon,  which  John  Addington  Symonds  pronounces 
"  the  Herculean  achievement  of  a  scholar  poet's  ripe  genius," 
^will  probably  not  permit  the  rest  to  retain  their  well-earned 
fame ;  that  in  Aristophanes^  Apology  he  has  treated  the  contro- 
versy between  Euripides  and  Aristophanes  with  more  learning 
and  greater  ability  than  all  other  critics ;  while  Prof.  Geddes 
rejoices  that  the  strongest  and  subtlest,  if  not  the  sweetest  poet 
of  the  age,  was  votary  at  the  shrine  of  the  Greek  muse.** 

1^0  many-lined  production  of  Browning's  is  obscure  or  inar- 
tistic, but  there  are  lines  and  passages,  discoverable  chiefly  in  the 
works  of  his  immaturity  and  those  later  ones  in  which  he  was 
compelling  certain  metrical  form  to  new  yet  fitting  service  that 
are  both.  They  have  arisen,  in  the  main,  from  the  fact  that  with 
him  now  and  then,  thought  succeeded  thought,  and  fancy,  fancy, 
too  rapidly  1  for  even  his  vast  speech-resources  to  furnish  forth 
perfect  vesture  for  them  every  one.  His  impulse  was  ever  to 
fresh  effort  rather  than  to  return  on  things  done,  and  thus  we 
have  more  true  poetry  and  thought  from  him  than  had  he,  like 
his  great  contemporary,  spent  time  bringing  every  line  to  that 
perfection  his  few  revisions  should  satisfy  us  he  could  have  lent 
it.  Is  it  his  thoughtful  In  Menioriam  or  his  other  works  that 
gives  Tennyson  his  hold  secure  upon  our  time? 

"  The  strength  of  poetry  is  in  its  thought ;. . .  .With  great  Ij- 
"  rists,  the  music  is  always  secondarj^, ....  they  leave  a  syllable  or 

^"  Fast  as  fancies  come  :  Rudely,  the  verse  being  as  the  mood 
"  it  plaite."    /^Axo^ts 


34  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

"  two  rough  or  even  mean . .  and  avoid  a  perfect  rhythm  or  sweet- 
"ness....,  lest  we  lean  too  definitely  on  sound,"  ^  "  Of  poetry 
"  the  success  is  not  attained  when  it  lulls  and  satisfies,  but  when 
"  it  astonishes  and  fires  us  with  new  endeavor  after  the  unattain- 
"  able/''  "  The  way  to  miss  the  first  requisite  of  poetry,  organic 
"unity,  is  to  give  undue  attention  to  parts."'  What  poem  of 
Browning's  lacks  it  ? 

Our  subjective  hindrance  to  the  understanding  of  his  work  is 
precisely  that  to  our  comprehension  of  all  true  science  and  art, 
viz.,  native  and  almost  ineradicable  tendency  to  the  inversion  of 
the  state  of  every  case.  Science  exists  in  refutation  of  natural 
impression,  as  the  hand-maid  of  art,  which,  primarily,  is  the  means 
of  doing  what  nature  has  not  done  for  us,  as  for  the  rest,  of  gen- 
erating higher  perceptions  and  reconciling  the  seeming  with  the 
real.  Both  have  existed  since  the  days  of  Cain, — whose  children 
were  the  first  to  enter  into  full  possession  of  the  genuine  human 
estate, — have  often  changed  their  habitat,  and,  to  their  mutual 
prejudice,  had  their  relations  inverted  in  man's  esteem.  At  the 
moment  the  former  is  fulfilling  its  function,  in  many  ways  better 
than  in  earlier  days,  but  grown  one-sided  in  method  ^inequal  to 
the  overthrow  of  certain  natural  impressions,  e.  g.,  that  space  has 
independent  existence,  that  His  will  is  delayed,  and  abridged  in 
execution  by  ours,  that  there  is  no  trinity,  i.  e.,  that  the  logical 
faculty  is  supreme,  and  that  character  is  not  mere  result  of  breed 
and  circumstance.* 

Certainly  with  these  ideas,  the  evolution  of  anything  must 
seem  singular,  whether  of  a  character  by  a  poet,  or  of  the  world 
by  the  Tcoir}Trj<i.  Shakespeare  knew  us  well,  that,  for  the  most  part, 
we  should  be  in  the  pit,  and  while  blending  the  representation  of 
action  in  character  with  that  of  character  in  action  wisely  put  the 
latter  in  the  foreground.  Leading  a  universal  life,  omnipresent, 
in  a  way,  in  others,  he  had  only  to  contract  himself  to  the  dimen- 

iRuskin.     sj^^nej-gou.      ^gQi-ace,  in  effect. 

*"  Mn  Character  hildet  sich  in  dem  Strom  der  Welf'' 


Me.  mekrell  on  browning  as  an  artist.  35 

sions  of  a  given  individual  to  be  the  same  for  all  purposes  of  rep- 
resentation yet  suffered  thence  no  loss  of  the  capacity  of  his  wider 
self  to  appreciate  the  genesis  of  any  character  into  which  he 
entered. 

Gothe  and  Browning,  being  feebler  imitations  of  personality, 
(perhaps  only  because  each  an  individual,  while  he  may  have  been 
more  than  one),  exemplify  the  process  of  moving  out  of  self,  by 
expansion,  which  being  our  way,  if  there  be  any  for  us,  they  are 
more  needed  by  us,  who  lead  no  universal  life,  move  not,  of  our- 
selves, from  out  our  ruts. 

It  would  be  a  presumption  against  the  merit  of  Browning's 
poetry  as  a  whole,  if  it  did  not  have  to  wait  awhile  for  more 
general  acceptance.  Dante's  waited  several  centuries  ;  and  not  a 
little  of  Gothe's  and  some  of  Shakespeare's  till  their  great  spirits 
had  passed  away. 

Our  children  are  pleased  enough  to  listen  to  certain  of  his  songs 
and  ballads,  the  Cavalier  Tunes  are  declaimed  in  the  school- 
rooms of  England  with  as  much  animation  as  anything  in  ours, 
showing  their  power  to  stir  the  old  loyalty  inborn  in  her  youth. 
We  note  only  11  in  Bryant's  collection  of  31,  and  7  in  Dana's  of 
19  years  ago,  but  large  space  is  given  to  his  poems  in  the  popular 
English  collections  of  the  day,  ^  It  is  safe  to  say  that  three  of  his 
dramas  and  150  of  his  minor  poems  prior  to  his  Men  and  Women, 
are  widely  read  and  prized  by  all  people  of  any  degree  of  feeling 
and  imagination,  while  those  who  know  the  latter  and  do  not 
care  for  them  are  limited  in  every  sense.  Only  his  minor 
works  first  won  Gothe  popular  regard,  so  that,  unless  as  affected 
by  the  order  of  their  production,  it  is  as  diflScult  to  see  anything 
peculiar  in  reception  of  Browning's  work  as  to  find  anything  ex- 
ceptional in  the  amount,  the  merits,  faults,  or  content  thereof. 

^Are  there  no  obscurities  or  irregularities  in  the  Greek  drama- 
tists or  the  greatest  English,  in  the  latter,  no  ill-timed  playing 

1  Whipple  puts  him  next  Tennyson,  and  no  other  of  the  century 
beside  them. 

2 Look  through  Tennyson's  work  prior  to  1850. 


36  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB, 

with  words  of  double  (even  simple)  entendre,  no  repetitions  or 
prolixity  in  him  or  Homer,  no  sinking  below  or  rising  above  the 
subject  in  the  Latin  models  ? 

"  Whoever  thinks  a  faultless  piece  to  see,  thinks  what  ne'er  was, 
"  nor  is,  nor  e'er  shall  be,"  ^^  Nihil  db  omne parte  heatum  est.'''' 
In  Browning  you  will  find  no  rounded  hollow  holes,  no  skin- 
deep  beauty,  no  shows  of  a  consistency  unknown  to  nature,  no 
cunning  of  which  men  say,  Lo,  behold  the  art ! 

By  the  Ring  and  the  Booh,  he  were  artist,  though  lie  had  writ- 
ten his  75,000  lines  besides,  with  the  ink  that  fades  in  drying. 
It  may  not  make  lis  competent  to  a  true,  but  may  preserve  us 
from  a  superficial  judgment  of  poetry,  not  to  be  apprehended  at 
sight,  to  keep  in  mind  the  following. 

Poetry  is  not  of  one  order  only,  yet,  of  whatever  order,  must 
have  musical  form,  and  such  as  is  in  harmony  with  the  thought 
and  imagery  it  would  convey.  The  higher  sort  involves  all  re- 
quisites of  the  lower  and  an  essential  difference  therefrom.  The 
excellencies  of  any  example  in  any  species,  can,  in  the  nature  of 
the  case,  rarely  be  present  in  like  degree.  Index  of  the  worth  of 
one  is  the  sum  of  the  degrees  in  which  it  fulfils  its  requisites. 
The  fine  arts  are  of  all  the  most  laborious,  characterized  each  by 
an  infinite  striving.  No  one  leaps  to  their  heights,  which,  even 
to  see,  requires  much  clearing  of  the  vision. 

Men  in  general  work,  constrained  by  necessity,  self-regard, 
ambition  or  greed,  toward  near  and  oft-attained  goals,  living, 
meanwhile,  in  each  other's  praise  and  enjoying  not  a  few  of  life's 
good  things  as  they  go,  but  in  lieu  of  these  motives,  yes,  in  re- 
sistence  of  the  most  powerful  of  them,  even  of  that  which  leads 
to  lives  spent  in  the  ser.vice  of  others  "for  the  peace  it  gives," 
what  is  to  sustain  the  artist's  energy  directed  to  a  goal  that  may 
be  reached,  never  or  too  late  for  more  than  a  dying  sigh  of 
gladness  for  having  wrought  according  to  the  dictates  from 
within  ? 


MR.    MERRELL   ON   BROWNING   AS   AN  ARTIST.  37 

Who  among  us  so  energetic  and  duty-driven  that  would  not 
have  been  appalled  at  the  labor,  self-abnegation  (as  men  reckon 
it),  and  barrenness  of  life,  often  with  all  its  pomp  and  riches  at 
command,  that  has  lain  between  great  artists  and  their  final 
triumphs?  What  of  common  joy,  of  joy  at  all,  other  than  in  pro- 
ductive activity  in  tliat  stretch  of  90  years  that  just  enabled 
Michael  Angelo  to  keep  his  word  and  cast  the  roof  of  the  best 
known  temple  to  the  living  God  that  is  built  with  hands. 

But  it  is  to  that  other  aspect  of  the  case,  in  which  the  art  is 
laborious,  that  I  would  especially  direct  your  attention. 

We  cannot  sense  the  simplest  form  of  words  without  a  labor 
of  the  mind  akin  in  kind  though  not  degree  to  that  of  him  who 
utters  them.  As  to  origin,  every  artistic  conception  is  tax  on 
the  intellectual  imagination  of  its  originator,  as  to  embodiment 
in  sound,  or  form,  or  form  and  color,  requires  an  exercise  of 
physical  and  psychical  powers  possible  to  them  only  from  here- 
dity and  long  antecedent  training,  and  can  look,  therefore,  only  to 
responsive  senses,  liearts,  and  heads,  for  its  comprehension  and 
enjoyment. 

While  remembering  all  the  pleasing  attributes  of  poetry  let  us 
not  forget  that  a^example  of  it,  though  affording  the  cleanest  cut 
images,  the  most  charming  thoughts,  and  flowing  as  smoothly  as 
ever  verse  flowed,  though  lacking  none  of  the  essentials  of  the 
nominal  definition  of  poetry,  (any  more  than  man  of  his,  when, 
as  in  infancy,  he  is  but  a  sweet,  laughing,  land-going  biped,  before 
rationality  has  supervened  upon  his  mere  sense-preception, 
memory  and  locomotive  powers),  may  yet  be  destitute  of  that 
element  by  which  poetry  becomes  immortal. 

Until  it  have  this,  it  comes  only  from  the  senses  and  pictorial 
imagination  of  its  originator,  and  flnds  but  like  resting  places  in 
us.  "  'Tis  greedy  of  the  moment,"  if  pathetic,  it  but  stimulates 
to  self-pity,  if  gay  or  sensuous,  but  favors  forgetfulness  of  interest, 
if  enlivening  or  martial,  confers  bu.t  short-lived  animation  or  cour- 


S8  MEMORIAL    MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING  CLUB. 

age,  and  can  be  powerful  for  ill,  can  fix  in  memory  scenes  so  revolt- 
ing as  to  sicken  life,  and  show  so  fair  the  face  of  matter  that  many 
a  spirit  has  yielded. 

It  is  poetry,  but  poetry  with  her  feet  on  the  ground,  unwinged 
before  her  flight,  that  has  as  yet  brought  nothing  down  from 
heaven,  or  done  anything  to  lift  man  thitherward. 

Technically,  this  element  in  virtue  of  which  any  production  of 
art  leaves  the  level  we  cling  to  and  beckons  us  to  a  higher,  is  that 
its  thought  shall  involve  some  particularization  of  the  universal; 
and  pointing  to  this  highest  excellence,  Aristotle  says: 

"  Poetry  is  a  more  philosophic  and  more  serious  matter  than 
"  history,"  being  expressive  of  the  universal  therein,  in  short,  in 
the  human,  "  and  should  exhibit  things  as  does  the  painting  of 
"  Zeuxis." 

Zeuxis  was  he  who  painted  for  the  birds ^  of  the  air  as  well  as 
men,  yes,  in  mtevnitatem^  who  through  contemplation  of  all  the 
beauty  of  woman  that  the  favor  of  chance,  for  short,  and  the 
interest  of  a  Grecian  state  could  unveil  to  him,  so  far  recovered 
the  archetype  of  female  loveliness  to  which  every  woman's 
face  and  shape  is  more  or  less  conformed  that  there  so  glowed 
again  (with  the  nameless  charm  of  das  Ewig  Weibliche),  in  form 
and  color,  the  ideal,  the  daughters  of  Greece, — under  certain  cir- 
cumstances— were  wont  to  dream  of,  as  to  make  her  later  poets 
sing  well-nigh  as  passionately  of  the  reflex  as  did  the  earlier  of 
the  reality.  Fully  perceptive  of  this  as  the  one  true  method  in 
art.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  says  in  substance,  "  The  idea  of  beauty 
"  in  each  species  is  an  invariable  one."  Would  you  paint  a  great 
man,  paint  that  consequence  in  you  of  having  seen  him  under  all 
the  varying  influences  incidental  to  this  state  of  ours,  and  per- 
haps somewhat  of  the  impression  a  life-long  intimacy  with  him 
gave  his  familiars,  may  be  imparted  to  some  of  those  who  view 

1  The  self -golden-crowned  painted  alone  for  the  senses,  for  the 
near-sightedness  of  man.     No  bird  would  have  pecked  his  grapes. 


MR.    MEEEELL   ON   BROWNING   AS    AN    AETI6T.  39 

your  portrait.  Would  you  paint  the  type  of  a  class,  it  will  be  more 
perfect  as  it  is  the  more  remote  from  peculiarities.  Would  you 
paint  man,  forget  the  strength  of  Hercules  in  the  delicacy  of 
Apollo,  etc.  "  The  difficulty  of  the  art  of  poetry  is  to  exemplify 
"the  universal  in  the  individuah"^  Horace.  "  The  genius  of 
"  Browning  is  to  discern  in  every  particular  an  epitome  of  cre- 
"  ation,  and  to  set  it  forth  in  appropriate  form."     Milsand. 

Here  if  time  served,  it  would  be  in  order,  to  lay  before  you 
examples  of  Browning's  poetry,  some  making  evident  how  in 
the  veriest  concretes  he  has  brought  down  to  our  apprehension 
the  highest  ideals,  others  giving  less  extraordinary  reductions  of 
the  many  to  the  one,  but  all  marked  by  a  perfection  of  poetic 
rhythm  readily  perceptible,  holding  a  harmony  between  sound 
and  sense  too  striking  to  escape  any  one,  conveying  imagery  with 
a  clearness,  and  infusing  stranger-thoughts  with  a  subtlety  even 
more  remarkable.  But  as  it  is,  I  must  content  myself  with  re- 
marking that  it  is  to  a  very  different  extent  and  with  varying  de- 
grees of  directness  that  great  poets  exercise  their  prerogative  of 
showing  the  individual,  exemplification  of  the  all,  that  the  pecu- 
liarity of  his  greatness  who  "  knew  man  as  he  was  and  might  be," 
resided  in  his  ability  to  speak  to  men  on  all  levels,  by  so  represent- 
ting  even  the  highest  universals,  that  in  him  sense  lies  within 
sense  in  such  wise  that  any  man  may  read  and  rest  content  with 
that  obvious  to  him,  nor  be  compelled  to  view  any  depth  beyond, 
while,  as  a  rule,  we  must  get  Browning's  bottom  thought  or  none. 

1  ISTot  characterization  by  mere  generalization  of  finite  attri- 
butes into  infinite,  good  or  bad,  not  representation  of  perfection 
beyond  nature,  or  complete  absence  of  grace,  in  man  or  woman. 
Here  lies  the  open  secret  of  non-formal  excellences  of  poetry, 
not  merely,  e.  g.^  why,  from  Tartufe  "  un  tartufe^  tartuferie^'' 
why,  "  armor,"  in  the  lines,  "  Armor  and  ashes  reach  the  house  of 
"  each  "  is  better  than  "  sword,"  but,  quite  generally,  the  reason 
of  the  pregnancy  of  the  passages  of  a  poet  as  compared  with  the 
tumidity  of  a  mere  writer  of  smooth  verse. 


40  MEMORIAL    MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

Now  what  to  ns,  wlien  done,  is  this  triumph  of  art  that  such 
labored  expression  has  been  needed  to  give  a  notion  of  ?  B3' 
compelling  us  to  enter  into  the  souls  of  others,  that  is,  to  enter- 
tain in  earnest  the  dominant  ideas  of  the  characters  it  represents, 
it  engenders,  in  spite  of  us,  impulsions  to  all  their  actions,  good 
and  bad,  through  their  sentiments  and  volitions  become  our  own, 
children  of  those  ideas^,  and  thus  whether  they  be  such  as  burst 
the  bonds  of  our  narrowness  or  sink  us  in  the  limitations  of  other 
of  less  heart  and  mind  than  we  chance  to  have,  we  are  made  to 
learn  that  we  exist  not  alone  in  our  own  place  but  in  extrariis, 
extranms^  etiam  alienissimis^  and  so  that  we,  as  individuals,  Mr. 
or  Mrs.,  so  and  so,  are  each  but  a  sum,  a  particular  collection  of 
impressions,  sentiments  and  impulses  seated  for  a  time  in  a  sen- 
tient thinking  centre  that  shall  more  and  more  rid  itself  of 
them.  And  what  is  this  but  our  universalization,  clue  to  mutual 
understanding,  first  step  to  perception  of  an  inner  and  com- 
mon nature  without  which  were  no  outer  and  lower? 

The  perfect  agreement  between  the  deeper  content  of  the 
poetry  of  Homer  and  ^schylus,  Chaucer,  Shakespeare  and 
Gothe  with  what  of  truth  we  deem  ourselves  in  possession  of 
through  other  instrumentalities  than  poetic  insight,  and  the  health- 
ful influence  it  spreads  all  round  by  begetting  even  in  those  who 
cannot  grasp  principial  thoughts,  the  sentiments  bred  of  them, 

^ "  There  is  nothing  but  ihitiklng  makes  it  so."^'  Thought  is  the 
"  root  of  all,"  and  everywhere,  when  the  daj's  are  fulfilled,  breeds 
feeling  and  desire,  but,  according  to  soil.  Only  in  concrete  unity 
with  its  natural  results  in  a  soul  alert  and  not  overfull  of  error, 
or  in  some  rank  rich  garden  of  nature,  does  it  other  itself  in  poetry. 
Hence  merely  knowing  something  of  versification  and  the 
thought  as  such  of  a  poem  does  not  enable  one  to  tell  whether 
its  form  is  consonant  with  its  content;  to  this  is  necessary  the 
frame  of  mind  of  the  author,  for  in  that  frame  or  mood  lies  uni- 
fied tlie  thought,  sentiment,  and  longing,  whence  flows  the  verse: 

'•  Great  poets  are  to  be  judged  by  the  frame  of  mind  they 
induce. " — E'merson. 


MR.    MEERELL   ON   BROWNING    AS   AN  ARTIST.  4:1 

confirms  its  worth,  while  the  affluence  of  Browning's  thought  and 
its  identity  with  theirs,  of  itself,  includes  him  in  their  ranks,  for 
though  each  was  original,  himself  alone  in  the  handling  of  his 
matter,  his  thought  was  not  peculiar  to  himself,  rising  from 
same  fountain  head  only  with  murmur  and  in  measure  different, 
and  in  whom  that  thought  dwells  in  all  its  fulness,  as  in  them, 
not  the  laborious  inkling  thereof  that  is  in  us,  it  begets  its  poetic 
body,  all  the  imagery  and  music  that  can  shadow  it  forth.  Its 
impulse  to  poetic  rhythm  affects  even  the  utterances  of  the 
prosaic  men  it  reaches,  but,  owing  to  their  imperfect  tuning,  results 
in  so  ill-regulated  recurrence  of  what  we  expect,  that  while  we 
value  their  insights  we  deem  the  style  hybrid,  amendable  only  by 
much  reference  to  the  prose  of  poets.  Is  the  thought^  of  the 
Greek  poets  revived  for  us  in  the  greatest  English  and  German, 
too  high  for  the  many  to  gather,  their  sentiments  such  as  only  the 
elect  can  share,  the  beauty  they  beheld  too  rare  for  common  per- 
ceptions, then  turn  the  gospel  back  into  Latin,  for  the  loudest 
notes  in  all  the  poesy  of  both  are  but  preludes  or  echoes  of  the 
words  thereof,  falling  like  strokes  of  an  axe  on  the  roots  of  the 
Upas-tree  of  human  error. 

As  Browning  has  been  called  this  and  that,  so,  with  the  same 
ineptitude,  has  his  poetry  been  styled  metaphysical,  religious, 
ethical,  aesthetic,  emotive,  scientific. 

No  poetry  of  the  higher  sort,  and  such  is  his,  will  bear  to  be 
thus  named,  unless  these  terms  are  disburthened  of  most  of  their 
associations,  but  let  them  be  applied  to  it,  and,  perhaps,  even  from 
the  measure  in  which  they  are  found  to  have  application  thereto, 

^Thought  plainer  to  those  who  know  what  life  is,what  the  strug- 
gle for  bread  or  sense,  and  against  excess  or  weakness,  yes,  to 
publicans,  sinners  and  idlers,  than  to  the  victims  of  elegant  leisure, 
self-consciousness,  moral  sense,  fastidiousness,  and  convention- 
ality. Limited  the  light  of  those  who  reject  it,  limited  the  sweet- 
ness of  those  who  blame  at  all,  and,  tried  by  these  tests,  limited, 
very,  the  number  of  the  cultured. 


42  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

some  notion  may  accrue  to  us  of  what  in  verity  may  be  meta- 
physics, religion  and  ethics. 

As  to  its  being  metaphysical. 

It  says  to  those  who  curl  the  lip  at  the  notion  of  a  science  of 
the  self-evident,  that  there  are  no  metaphysics  of  the  sort  they 
figure  save  in  their  all  too  common  sense  ;  to  those  preferring, 
to  the  assurance  seated  in  the  head  as  hope  in  the  heart, — in  ac- 
cord with  the  eternal  fitness  of  things  for  this  excursus  from 
the  state  it  no  longer  enters  into  us  to  conceive — ,  the  subjective 
certainty  that  comes  of  repetition  and  assumptions  of  which  no 
proof  is  possible,  that,  but  for  her  hints,  their  mathematics  were 
still  in  the  Euclidean  stage,  their  astronomy  Ptolemaic,  and  their 
chemistry, alchemy,  their  theory  meagre  as  to  thought,things,word 
and  deed,  and  the  wonders  of  their  working  f  ew^ :  to  those  who  seek 
the  soul's  abode,  that  it  resides  in  no  subject  for  their  dissection,  in 
no  pineal  gland,  or  corpus  callosum  ;2  to  those  who,  setting  forth 
with  condescending  comment  the  philosophy  of  "  the  father  of 
"those  that  know,"  inculcate  the  empty  notion  of  a  world  all  by  it- 
self out  there,  of  which  an  image  is  wrought  somehow  in  and  by 
us,  that,  so  far  from  merest  glimpse  of  an  original  which  might  in 
conscience  entitle  them  to  call  what  we  behold  an  image,  there 

1  "  Science  must  plainly  attain  its  highest  development  in  the 
"  work  of  a  future  poet."     Maudsley.  cf.  Das  Marchen  Gothe's. 

*  Knowest  thou  not  what  thou  deemest  thy  abode  hath  its 
abode  in  thee,  not  indeed  as  figment  of  thy  dream  is  of  thy  sub- 
stance built,  and  on  thy  state  of  revery,  sleep  or  madness  doth 
depend,  but  for  thy  tenement  to  seem  to  many  another  soul  with 
thee,  till  this  its  function  fail  and  its  element  form  afresh,  a  fig- 
ment of  thy  maker's  dream,  that  maketh  all  the  world  for  thee, 
is  thy  abode,  none  thou,  for  thou  in  him  dost  live  and  move  and 
have  thy  being,  and  wouldst  thou  share  that  glorious  dream, 
then  must  thou  wear  each  mortal  coil  with  which  His  fancy  thee 
indue,  as  blind-worm  squirm  or  eagle  fly,  as  lion  roar  or  man 
implore,     o.  h.,  i.  e.,  oratio  corriTnodi  causa  hibrida. 


MR.    MEREELL   ON    BROWNING   AS   AN  ARTlST.  43 

is  no  exterior  to  consciousness,  that  they  take  the  real  for  reflex 
of  its  shadow,  that  the  soul  is  circumference  of  the  universe, 
that  neither  darkness  nor  silence  lies  beyond  its  limits,  that  the 
mind  is  its  own  place,  occupying  not,  yet  filled,  that  the  great 
potter  moulds  no  clay  but  soul,  that  there  is  no  stuff  but  that 
which  dreams  are  made  of,  the  stuff  we  are.^ 

"  Offend  not  the  soul  which  is  its  own  refuge  and  witness."  It 
has  to  say  to  those  who  initiate  their  bent,  owe  their  moral  excel- 

1  Anaesthetized  by  the  fumes  of  many  laboratories,  we  calmly 
hear  how  the  18th  century  established  the  indestructibility  of 
matter,  the  19th  that  of  energy,  and  that  perhaps  the  next  may 
do  as  much  for  soul,  and  then  go  dream  that  it,  the  source 
whence  the  centuries  unroll,  perchance  may  die  upon  the  ether 
waves, — O  Parmenides,  in  this  dire  need  of  ours,  speak,  but 
through  some  glory  of  our  age  lest  we  hear  not — ;  narcotized  by 
the  smoke  of  our  own  unacceptableness,  we  bow  the  knee  to 
"  the  fighter  for  Israel,  whose  portion  is  his  people,  for  whom 
"  alone  he  lets  the  rain  fall,"  and  rise  to  treat  with  contempt 
his  chosen,  whose  notions — useful,  accurate  inversions  of  invisi- 
ble things,  to  see  them  by,  now  clear  to  them — born  of  the 
splendid  imagination  of  the  egoism  unfathomable  of  their  prime, 
are  the  common  borrowed  furniture  of  our  barren  minds. — 
"  He  spares  the  world  only  for  Christians'  sake."  O  Luther, 
great  reformer ! — exalted  with  suppositious  regard  for  the  laws 
of  thought,  and  fascinated  with  an  imaginary  deliverance  of 
consciousness,  the  legitimate  inference  from  which  would  be  as 
surely  hell  as  heaven,  we  smile  the  smile  of  superior  intellectu- 
ality and  moral  dignity  at  the  propositions  "A  is  non-A  "  and 
"  man's  Gtod  is  his  higher  self,"  and  knowing  that  fire  burns, 
the  many  ways  to  physical  distress  and  death,  that  to  violate  the 
sympathetic  principle — ,  part  and  parcel  of  us,  as  truly  as  is  sensi- 
tiveness to  heat  and  cold — ,  is  the  way  to  a  remorse  or  shame 
shrieking  for  the  night  that  shuts  the  eye  in  death  annihilative, 
we  conclude  that,  sine  arhitrio,  we  shouldn't  be  responsible  and, 
unrestrained  by  freedom,  might  do  as  we  please. 


44  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    STEACU8E   BROWNING   CLUB. 

lence  just  a  little  to  themselves,  for  whom  the  truth  is  not  quite 
compulsory, — "  No  more  than  the  passive  clay  disputes  the  potter's 
"  act,  can  the  whelmed  mind  disobey  Knowledge  the  cataract" 
— who  are  not  utterly  at  the  mercy  of  it  and  love,  on  whose 
principle,  nature  made  monster  and  the  brother  potential  devil, 
e'en  charity  for  God  is  vox  et  praeterea  nihil,  that  could  their  even 
more  than  metaphysical  imagination  of  fundamental  caprice ^  be 
replaced  in  us  by  any  vision  of  Him  who  loves  because  he  must, 
the  clash  of  part  with  part  and  part  with  whole  would  end,* 
that  all  motive,  all  might,  the  world  of  longing  at  the  bot- 
tom of  the  realized,  the  one  force  of  science,  the  omnipotence 

1  "Arhitrium  dei  asylum  ignorantiae  estP  "  He  saw  through 
"  his  own  soul  the  marvel  of  the  everlasting  will." — cf .  Sordello. 
A  father  holds  his  sleeping  son  in  arms  and  wonders  at  his 
face ;  could  that  useful  thing  "  whence  death  and  all  our  woe," 
usurp  that  father's  heart,  the  child  would  wake  in  dread,  and 
drifted  out  of  child's  estate,  with  him,  precocious,  cower  before 
imagined  chance,  o.  h.  When  the  true  interest  of  a  nature  is  as 
obvious  to  it  as  it  can  be  and  it  goes  against  the  same,  the  more 
intense  its  selfishness,  the  greater  its  impotence  to  follow  its 
own  dictate.  And  the  youth  Elihu,  of  the  kindred  of  the  ele 
rated  said  unto  the  dreamer  of  judgments  alone  for  the  wicked 
and  unrepentant,  to  the  judge  according  to  works,  and  to  the  de- 
claimer  of  the  portion  of  the  wicked,  I  have  waited  for  your 
words,  days  should  speak  and  multiplied  years  teach,  yet  great 
men  are  not  ever  all  wise,  nor  the  aged  in  possession  of  all  wis- 
dom. I  may  not  flatter  lest  I  vanish,  nor  with  your  speech  am  I 
to  speak  to  the  afflicted.  O,  Job,  though  thy  flesh  be  consumed, 
and  soul  abhor  the  meat  of  desire,  and  bones  stick  out,  yet  if 
there  be  a  messenger  with  one  to  show  unto  man  his  upright- 
ness, his  flesh  shall  be  fresher  than  a  child's  and  he  shall  see  his 
face  with  joy.  And  they  went,  the  trio,  to  beg  the  prayers  of 
him  who  should  live  again,  Elihu,  unto  the  business  whereunto 
he  was  called,  cf.  Kom.  ix.  18  and  29  ;  1  Cor.  x.  29. 

3  cf.  Gothe. 


MR.   MEKRELL  ON  BROWNING   AS   AN   ARTIST.  46 

of  theology,  are  subject  to  Reason,  rational  necessity,  the  law  of 
love  and  laws,  the  fate^^schylus,  the  first  mover  of  Aristotle, 
the  logos  of  St.  John. 

"  One  and  all  of  Ate  held  in  thrall,"  ^  "  Ate,  power  mislead- 
"ingall."' 

"  Over  gods  sits  law  supreme.  The  gods  are  under  Law, — so 
"  do  we  judge,— and  therefore  can  we  live.  While  right  and 
"  wrong  stand  (to  our  feeling)  separate  forever."  ^  "  Did  not 
"  an  appointed  fate  constrain  the  fate  from  gods."  ^  "  When  to 
"  destruction  He  will  plague  a  house,  He  plants  among  its 
"  members  guilt  and  sin."* 

"  Destiny  that  hath  this  lower  world  to  instrument  and  all 
"  that  is  in  it."  *     "  O,  Thou  eternal  Mover."  * 

"  All's  love  and  all's  law,"  "  springing  from  the  realm  of  the 
"indwelling  only  God."' 

And  it  has  further  to  say  to  these  same,  lay  no  blame  anywhere, 
lest  your  wasted  inner  sense  define  for  you  no  vaguest  outline  of 
that  connection,  referred  to  in  Eph.  iv.  5,  John  xv.  5. 

"  In  whom  is  life  forever'^ore,  and  whom  existence  in  its 
"  lowest  forms  includes." 

"All  things  unto  our  flesh  are  kind  in  their  descent  and  being; 
"to  our  mind  in  their  ascent  and  cause."' 

"In  the  beginning  was  self  alone',  the  self  in  all  ourselves,  to 
"  be  grasped  only  by  him  who  he  himself  grasps,"  exclusive  in  its 
self-regard,  for  there  was  naught  beside,  one  and  one-minded, 

^  ^schylus.  *  Homer.  ^  Euripides.  *  Shakspere.  '  Sophocles. 

•  "  Life  is  not  a  contrast  to  non-living  matter  but  a  further 
"  development  of  it."  —Maudsley. 

"^  "  Friendless  was  the  mighty  Lord  of  all  and  felt  defect." 


46  MEMORIAL  MEETING,   SYRACUSE  BROWNING  CLUB.      ^ 

now  many  and  many-minded,  yet  still  it  is  as  though  a  pact^, 
bound  us  each  to  each,  or,  nerve ^  with  more  than  the  pneumo- 
gastric's  power  to  pain,  ignored,  else  turning  policy  to  pleasure. 

Remorse  is  sympathy  struggling  to  be  free,  a  thorn  that 
groweth  in  and  in  till  it  shall  pierce  the  heart,  till  I  shall  cease 
to  think  of  me  and  give  my  thought  entire  to  thee,  O,  brother 
wounded  whether  by  hand  of  mine  or  thine  or  any  other,  which 
the  need  that  evil  come,  hath  served,  o.  h. 

Some  nerves  arc  ever  tense,  those  binding  us  to  kindred,  our 
choices  and  our  issue,  but  as  little  to  be  severed  are  our  connec- 
tions with  the  millions  in  our  land,  and  yet  they're  few  to  those 
that  bind  us  to  the  many  of  mankind.     Affection  must  lose  itself 

1''  From  endless  time  their  ears  have  rung  with  words  by  angel 
"  voices  sung.  Art  thou  not  bound  to  God  ?  they  cried,  and  the 
"  blest.  Yes !  whole  hosts  replied."  "  The  Sofis  suppose  an  express 
"  contract  on  the  day  of  eternity  without  beginning  between 
"created  spirits  and  supreme  soul  from  which  they  were  de- 
"  tached."— //^  %  farrts. 

2  Look  to  that  nerve  for  "  the  something  not  '  outer '  self  that 
"  works  for  righteousness,  for  the  element  whereby  selfishness  is 
self -corrective,  for  all  there  is  of  any  "  worm  that  dieth  not,''  or  of 
any  moral  dynamic  calculated  to  imple  us  along  ways  that  might 
augment  human  happiness,  but  are  missed,  by  most,  from  dis- 
regard of  those  who  have  revealed  them — ,  Lao-tse,  Buddha,  Aris- 
totle, Christ,  Paul,  Moliammed,  Choo-tse,  Hegel,  Lotze,  Huxley, 
Spencer,  Browning,  and  the  like,  each  in  his  degree.  In  the  depth 
where  all  is  wanting  save  the  pain  that  one  can  feel,  a  rope  is 
coiled  about  me,  and  looking  on  its  fibres  I  can  see  heartstrings .  . 
all  twisted  up  for  me,  o.  h.  cf.  Eugene  Sue.  "I  know  not  where 
"  His  islands  lift  their  fronded  palms  in  air,  I  only  know  I  cannot 
"  drift  beyond  His  love  and  care.'  " 


MK.    MERRELL   ON   BROWNING    AS  AN  ARTIST.  47 

in  patriotism  as  that  in  universalism,  and  of  these  three,  the  first 
and  last  are  purest.^ 

"  For  I  dipped  into  the  future,  far  as  human  eye  could  see. 
"  Saw  the  vision  of  the  world,  and  all  the  wonder  that  would  be. 
"...  .Till  the  war  drums  throbbed  no  longer,  and  the  battle  flags 
"  were  furled  in  the  Parliament  of  man,  and  the  federation  of  the 
"  world.  There  the  common  sense  of  most  shall  hold  a  fretful 
"  realm  in  awe,  and  the  kindly  earth  shall  slumber,  lapt  in  uni- 
versal law." 

Now  for  the  applicability  of  the  rest  of  these  poetic  epi- 
thets to  this  poesy.  Religious  in  the  ordinary  sense  !  What 
great  poet  has  not  fallen  from  Olympus  who  tried  to  make  it  so  ? 

i"I  dream  of  a  day  when  an  English  statesman  shall  arise 
with  a  heart  too  large  for  England,  having  courage  in  the  face  of 
his  countrymen  to  assert  of  some  suggested  policy,  "  This  is  good 
"  for  your  trade,  is  necessary  for  your  domination  ;  but  it  will 
"  vex  a  people  hard  by,  it  will  hurt  a  people  further  off,  it  will 
"  profit  nothing  to  the  general  humanity ;  therefore  away  with 
"  it." — Mrs.  Browning.     "  What  greed  has  grasped,  many  folk 

"  has  caused  to  live  forlorn."  "  Dulce  et  decorum ,"  yet  even 

that  last  of  those  true  old  Romans,  who  acted  straight  up  to  their 
light,  to  what  was  duty  for  them,  and  did  not  go  beyond  it  into 
any  speculative,  saw  e'er  his  eyes  closed  that  the  principles  of 
murdered  Csesar  must  prevail,  and  that  they  were  wider,  though 
not  yet  the  widest.  "  C.  In  such  a  time  as  this  it  is  not  meet 
"  that  every  nice  offence  should  bear  a  comment.  Many  have 
"  wished  noble  Brutus  had  immortal  Caesar's  eyes. — B.  He 
"  would  be  crowned.  How  that  might  change  his  nature?  He 
"may,  then  lest  he  may,  prevent.  I  have  not  known  when  his 
"affection  swayed  his  reason.  O,  Julius  Caesar,  thy  spirit  walks 
"abroad  and  turns  our  swords  into  our  proper  entrails." 


46j  MEMORIAL    MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING  CLUB. 

"Religion  makes  a  rhapsody  of  words"  not  poetry. ^ 

Religious  ?  That  lays  again  the  injunction  to  raise  no  tearful 
eye,  no  pathetic  voice  to  the  invisible — no  respecter  of  persons, 

^  Poetry  proceeding  from  unimpaired  intellectual  imagination 
and  love  of  nature  and  man  has  for  content  the  universal  in  all 
religions,  views,  feelings  and  longings  of  men,  and  is  character- 
ized by  the  massive  common  sense  of  Shakespeare,  the  optimism 
of  Sophocles,  Gothe,  and  Browning,  and  the  humanity  of  Eu- 
ripides, Terence,  Lucretius,  Horace,  and  Shelley.  The  imagina- 
tion of  genius  generous  to  the  traditional  gives  birth  to  the 
spectacularism  of  Dante's  Inferno ;  dwelling  on  notions  of 
superior  beings  and  Hebraic  judgments,  to  that  of  Milton's 
epic,  the  former  reflecting  the  dark  accidental  side,  both  of 
Eastern  and  Western  Catholicism,  the  latter  the  like  side  of  our 
protestantism  ;  occupied  with  the  perfect  and  the  moral,  yet 
kept  in  vigor  by  exceptional  rapport  with  nature,  to  Words- 
worthian  heat-lightnings  on  expanses  of  vacuity ;  entangled  in 
the  skirts  of  philosophy,  to  Coleridgian  Eng-Ger,  or  dream 
flow  of  words  in  fancy's  train.  But  what  outcome  from  both 
Dante  and  Milton,  when  genius  threw  off  its  trammels !  Es- 
pecially from  the  former  as  the  more  universal,  conformed,  and 
attached  to  the  real.  Tradition  is  conservatrix  of  natural  im- 
pressions, especially  of  such  as  are  flattering  to  our  native  egoism, 
{e.  g.,  that  there  is  blame  somewhere)  and  the  necessary  though 
not  so  aggreeable  corollaries.  What  so  obvious  as  that  the 
religion  of  us  (325,000,000,  white,  red  and  black),  is  retaining 
its  hold  on  this  bescienced  age,  only  by  eclipsing  its  bad  text 

with  its  good  or  by  borrowings 2  Thes.  i.  9,  by  Rom.  xi. 

24  and  26,  "  My  law  is  law  of  grace  for  all "  ? — Islamism  with  her 
singular  aptitude  for  the  rational,  when  at  low  ebb  elsewhere, 
began  the  process  long  ago,  and  there  is  hope,  if  he  hold  them 
not  at  full  arm's  length  that  370,000,000  yellow  and  brown  men 
may,  to  their  gain,  return  our  compliments  in  kind,  and  even 
well-based  Brahmanism  yield  a  point  or  two — let  young  widows' 
hair  grow  and  possibly  some  day  even  let  them  speak,  unshorn, 
and  uncovered,^in^the  temple. 


MR,    MERRELL   ON   BROWNING   AS   AN   ARTIST.  49 

heeding  us  no  more  nor  less  than  the  little  sparrows  that  fall, 
shaping  the  ends  of  us  both  alike — ,  till  all  the  seen  is  loved 
and  reverenced,  "above,  around  and  under."  "  In  all  line  and 
"  authentic  place,"  and  "  self  itself,"  as  unit  midst  the  rest — ; 
that  teaches  there  is  no  consciousness  of  the  infinite,  only  of  the 
infinity  of  our  own.  He  that  hath  seen  me  hath  seen  the  prin- 
ciple 1    of  his  being,  yet  I  am  but  its  iflQmanency  in  you,  and, 

"  Naught  availeth  but  a  new  creature,"  the  extinction  of  us  by 
the  higher  self,  "  rd  ksivovv  c5?  "kpod  ixevov." 

"  Thee  our  hearts  yearn  after  as  a  bride  that  glances  past  us 
"  veiled,  but  ever  so  that  none  the  veil  from  what  it  hides  may 
"  know.  Thee  throughout  the  universe,  wherein  thou  dost  thy- 
"  self  reflect  and  through  eyes  of  him  whom  man  thou  madest, 
"  scrutinize." 

"  The  individual  soul  works  through  the  shows  of  sense  up  to 
"  an  outer  soul  as  individual  too — to  find  at  length,  God,  man,  or 
"  both  together  mixed."  "  What  can  be  known  of  God  is  mani- 
"  fest ;  "  that  inculcates  no  contemjptum  mundi,  but  that  life  is  its 
own  reward. 

"  'Tis  life  of  which  our  nerves  are  scant,  more  life  and  fuller 
"that  we  want."  "Ends  accomplished  turn  to  means."  "Mere 
"  living !  how  lit  to  employ  all  the  heart,  and  the  soul  and  the 
"  senses  forever  in  joy."  "  Dux  vitae,  dia  voluptas ....  At  non 
"  . . . .  hene  sine  puro  pectore  vivV 

Ethical !  That  knows  no  non- Aristotelian  virtue,  ii-Take  but  de- 
"  gree  away ^^IZ-deli vers  no  moral  verdict,  beholds  no  falls  into  the 

1  Whole  wholly  in  each  of  its  parts,  but  exhausted  by  none.  I 
seen  of  you  only  in  tlie  measure  in  which  I  unveil  in  you  the  \ 
rationality,  beauty,  and  sympathy,  unlimited,  hidden  in  the   in- 
visible.    "  To  know  is  opening  out  a  way  for  the  imprisoned    / 

"  splendor  to  escape,"  no  entry-way  "  for  light  supposed  to  be 
without."  "^ 

2  "  They  say  best  men  are  moulded  out  of  faults  and,  for  the 
"  most,  become  much  more  the  better  for  being  a  little  bad," 


50  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

gulf  in  the  little  slips ^  of  men  and  women,  teaches  qui  vitia 
odit  homines  odit^,  that  conscience  is  but  fear,  fear  of  the  rise  of 
sympathy  in  us  with  the  power  of  remorse — ,  "  conscience  doth 
"  make  cowards  of  us  all  " — ,  sees  heroism  in  crime,  exacts  as  much 
admiration  for  greatness  of  soul  when  exhibited  by  the  so-called 
bad  as  by  the  good.»iiMan  the  actual !  Nay,  praise  the  potential,'^— 
that  affords  us  naught  to  quote  in  favor  of  our  pet  reforms,  shows 
that  only  through  passion  can  passion  be  refined  3,  and  recognizes 
as  the  bottom  and  enduring  requirement  of  our  nature,  a  dra- 
matic existance  and  no  saints'  rest. 

JEsthetic !  That  can  see  beauty  in  ugliness,  good  in  evil,  truth 
in  error,  hope  in  ill-success,  hides  no  blood-red  thread  in  the  warp 
and  woof  of  life,  yet  seeing  no  sin,  no  perfect  martyrs  or  horrors 
of  wickedness,  easily  avoids  all  extremes,  makes  beauty's  measure 
a  side  not  so  simple*,  that  must  be  touched  before  it  dawns  upon 
us  in  things  or  actions,  before  either  the  golden  section  or  the  golden 

^  "Gently  scan  your  brother  man,  still  gentler  sister  woman; 
"though  they  may  go  a  kennin'  wrang,  to  step  aside  is  human. 
"  One  point  must  still  be  greatly  dark,  the  moving  why  tliey  do 
"  it.  And  just  as  lamely  can  ye  mark  How  far  perhaps  they 
"  rue  it."     Is.  Ixv.  5.     John  viii.  9. 

2  "Z^e  vitiis  nostris  scalam  nobis  faciirnus .  " 

3  "  Our  loves  are  portals  to  higher ""  forever  barred  till  the  lower 
have  been  passed.  "  Oras  amet  qui  nunquam  amavit,  quique 
"  amavit  eras  ameV 

*  "  No  notice  of  identity  without  recollection  of  the  blessed- 
"  ness  of  peace,  no  seeing  contrast  without  glimpse  sometimes  of 
"  the  hatefulness  of  enmity,  sometimes  enjoyment  from  mutual 
"completion  of  opposites,  no  discernment  of  symmetry  or  equi- 
"  poise,  without  stirring  of  the  pain  and  pleasure  of  secure  repose, 
"  of  bondage  under  laws.  The  world  becomes  alive  to  us  through 
"  power  to  see  in  forms  the  joy  and  sorrow  of  existence  they 
"  hide."— Zofee. 

"  Aller  Genuss  hesteht  in  Befreiung  von  Noth  oder  Pein.''^ 


MR.    MERRELL   ON    BROWNING   AS   AN  ARTIST.  5l 

mean  wear  it  for  us,  that  it  is  for  every  sake,  with  reference  beyond 
itself,  addressed  not  to  sentimentality,  (the  subjective  feeling  and 
judgment  of  utility  of  tliese  and  those)  but  to  the  co-sentiment  of 
men  and  whole  being  of  each.  "  Fast  by  the  threshold  of  Jove's^ 
"  court  are  placed  two  casks,  one  stored  with  evil,  one  with  good." 
"  1  make  peace  and  create  evil." 

Ye  are  subject  to  vanity  not  willingly,  but  in  hope,  and  by 
reason  of  hira  who  doeth  all  things  well,  and  worketh  in  you 
not  only  to  do  but  to  will,  and  though  evil  must  come  and  woe 
to  him  by  whom  it  cometh,  yet  no  woe  is  worthy  to  be  taken 
into  account  with  the  glory  that  shall  be  revealed  in  you  as 
the  ages  roll  on."  "Else  I  avert  my  face,  nor  follow  into  that 
dim  sequestered  state  where  God  unmakes  but  to  re-make  the 
soul  he  else  made  first  in  vain."^ 

"  Evil  belongs  as  necessarily  to  the  whole  as  that  the  torrid 
"  zone  must  burn  and  Lapland  freeze,  that  there  be  a  temperate 
"region."  "  "Where  the  salt  marshes  stagnate,  crystals  branch  ; 
"  Blood  dries  to  crimson  ;  Evil  is  beautified  in  every  shape. 
"  Thrust  beauty  then  aside  and  banish  Evil  ?  Wherefore  !  After 
"  all,  is  Evil  a  result  less  natural  than  good."  "  Crime  involves 
"  the  penalty  and  all  atone."  "  The  members  of  God  war  to- 
"  gether,  (by  the  sacrifice  of  the  innocent  and  just,  the  world  goes 
"  on),  yet  in  the  sphere  of  this  all,  love  is  power  and  hate  is  im- 

1  "JSText  Him  Pallas,"  beauty  complete,  fountain  of  all  knowl- 
e'dge,  wisdom,  and  art,  blending  of  harmony  and  discord,  control- 
ler of  Ares,  reprobation  on  her  shield  and  mercy  behind,  Minerva 
operosa^  mens  cui  regnum  Totius  tributum  est,  Neith,  of  veil 
urjlifted  because  none  may  know  from  the  identity  of  contradic- 
tories it  hides,  that  mystic  ever-worn  garment  of  the  All.  "  Our 
"  life  is  nature's  garment  and  her  shroud."  "  So  schaff^  ich  am 
sausenden  Wehstuhl  der  Zeit,  %ind  wirhe  der  Gottheit  lehendiges 
Kleidr 

2  "  Only  through  knowledge  of  evil,  comes  man  to  knowledge 
"of  right,  only  in  struggle  with  blindness,  through  aeons,  his 
"sight." — E.  A.      Conner. 


52  MEMORIAL    MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING  CLUB. 

"potence."  "None  of  mortal  race  shall  know  a  course  un- 
"  marked  by  woe."  Yet  "  courage,  my  child  !  In  heaven  He  is 
" . . . .  commit  thy  bitter  griefs  to  him  and  forget  not  nor  be 
"  angry  with  thine  enemies."  "  Confusion  to  thy  sight  moves 
"  regular ;  the  unlovely  scene  is  bright.  Tliy  hand,  educing  good 
"  from  evil  brings  to  one  apt  harmony  the  strife  of  things.     One 

"ever-during  law  still  binds  the  whole But  when.... wide 

"  from  life's  chief  good  they  headlong  stray ....  Father,  disperse 
"  these  shadows  of  the  mind  from  thy  off-spring,  image,  and  echo, 
"of  thy  eternal  word." 

"  The  truth  shall  make  you  free."^ 

"  Both  the  holy  forms  are  one,  and  what  as  Beauty  here  is  won, 
"  we  shall  as  Trutli  in  some  hereafter  know," 

Emotive  ?2  That  would  rid  us  of  all  passions,  acquaint  with 
the  composure  of  the  wider  view,  beget  the  calm  of  beauty's 
spell,  inspire  the  tranquility  of  the  love  that  casteth  out  fear,  and 
still  the  revolt  of  pity  by  teaching  that  fate  is  kind.^ 

1  "  Wendet  zur  Klarheit  Euch  liebende  Ftammen  die  sich 
^^  verdammen,  heiledie  Wahrheit ;  dasz  sie  vom  Bosen  froh  sich 
"  erlosen,  um  in  dem  Alherein  selig  zu  sein." 

*  "  Of  those  things  only  should  one  be  afraid,  which  have  the 
"  power  of  doing  others  han-m,  of  the  rest,  no." — Dante. 

3  Tragedy  is  to  remind  us  that  all  things  happen  according  to 
nature,  comedy  to  cure  of  insolence,  contempt  and  disgust.  "  If 
"  thou  art  delighted  with  what  is  shown  on  the  scenic  stage,  thou 
"  shouldest  not  be  troubled  with  what  takes  place  on  the  real.  To 
"  the  integrity  of  the  all,  himself  included,  is  necessary  what  is 
"  brought  on  any  man,  happening  him  from  the  most  ancient 
"  causes  spun  with  his  destiny,"  cf.  Arist.  and  M.  Aurel.  "  What 
"  is  not  good  for  the  hive  is  not  good  for  the  bee."  "  Me 
"and  my  children,  if  the  gods  neglect,  this  has  its  reason  too." 
"Ripneus  fell  too,  than  whom,  a  juster,  truer  man  was  not  in 
"  Troy.  But  the  gods  judged  not  so."  "  There  is  no  great  and 
"small  for  the  soul  that  maketh  all,"  neither  is  it  increased  nor 
diminished,  and  its  interest  in  the  spectacle  of  life  is  at  the  high- 
est, when  it  is  most  wretched. 


MR.    MEREELL   ON   BROWNING    AS   AN  ARTIST.  53 

"  Dry  up  your  tears,  and  stick  your  rosemary  on  this  fair  corse." 

"  O  the  cry  did  break  against  my  very  heart." 

"  Be  collected,  no  amazement,  tell  your  piteous  heart  there's 
"  no  harm  done." 

"  Till  unseemly  debate  turn  concord — despair,  acquiescence  in 
fate." 

Scientific?  That  lays  a  leaf  in  the  dead  love's  hand  all  un- 
witting that  her  soul  was  but  a  transient  phenomenon  incidental 
to  the  play  of  the  universal  energy,  that  says  the  "  human  time 
"shall  'never'  close  its  eyelids  'nor'  the  human  sky  be  gathered 
"  like  a  scroll."  "iWZ  desperadumy  ^^  Alia  origo  nos  expec- 
''Hat,  aliwhi^rerumj  status^''  "when  the  soul  shall  fall  from  out 
"  this  envelope."  "  I  know  there  shall  dawn  a  day — is  it  here 
"  on  the  homely  earth  ?  Is  it  yonder  worlds  away,  where  the 
"  strange  and  new  have  birth ....  Some  where,  below,  above,  shall 
"a  day  dawn — this  I  know — when  Power,  which  vainly  strove, 
"  my  weakness  to  o'erthrow  shall  triumph."  "  What  if  earth 
"  be  but  the  shadow  of  Heaven  and  things  therein,  each  to  the 
"  other  like,  more  than  on  earth  is  thought."  Raphael  to  Adam. 
"  We  strive  and  thrive, ....  fare  ever  there  as  here."  "  Ages 
"past  the  soul  existed,  here  an  age  'tis  resting  merdy,  and 
"  fleets  again  for  ages."  "  And  for  my  soul,  what  can  it  do  to 
"that?"^ 

Pausing  for  no  choice  of  words,  I  should  call  this  poetry, 
emancipating,  incentive  to  action,  rational  when  possible — "  it  is 
"better  being  sane  than  mad  " — but  action  rather  of  Byronic 
naturalness  than  none.  "  The  native  line  of  resolution  is  sick- 
"  lied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought ;  and  enterprises  of 
"  great  pith  and  moment  with  this  regard  their  currents  turn 
"  awry,  and  lose  the  name  of  action."  "  The  flighty  purpose 
"never  is  o'ertook  unless  the  deed  go  with  it."  "Let  a  man 
"  contend  to  the  uttermost  for  his  life's  set  prize,  be  it  what  it 
"will."  "In  the  beginning  was  the  deed,"  "the  trinity  of 
"  thought,  word  and  deed."  "  The  practic  part  of  life  must  be 
"  mistress   to   all   this   theoric,"    yet,  "  whatever  praises  itself 


54  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

"  but  in  deed,  devours  the  deed  in  praise."     "  Life's  no  resting 
"  but  a  moving,  let  your  life  be  deed  on  deed." 

The  function  of  art  is  to  help  the  spirit  in  its  return  from 
otherness  to  itself,  and  science  but  another  back-leading  way  to 
that  estate  in  which  no  exercise  of  the  discursive  intellect  was 
requisite,  and  no  art  that  is  named  or  conceivable  had  any  reason 
for  being,  or,  if  there  be  no  God  without  creatures  and  no 
creature  without  God,  it' is  a  goal  never  to  be  reached,  because  no 
living  thing  shall  rise  all-sidedly  at  once,  intellectually,  aestheti- 
cally and  sympathetically,  to  the  height  at  which  the  creature- 
nature  would  cease. 

"  Many  the  wanderings  of  the  soul  in  imaginations,  opinions, 
"  and  led  by  the  logical  faculty,  but  the  life  of  reason,  the  alone 
"  inerratic,  is  the  mystic  port  to  which  Homer  conducts  Ulysses 
"  after  abundant  wanderings."  Proclus.  cf .  Dante,  Par.  iv, 
124,  129. 

"  I  may  put  forth  angel-plumage  once  unmanned  but  not 
"  before."  lil_They  that  level  at  my  abuses  reckon  up  their  own." 
"  Man's  most  Godlike,  being  most  a  man."^  "  I  have  done ;  and 
"  if  any  blame  me,  thinking  that  merely  to  touch  in  brevity  the 
"  topics  I  dwell  on  were  unlawful ....  I  refer  myself  to  Thee 
"  instead  of  him." 

"  Orandutn  est  tot  sit  metis  sana  in  corpore  sanoP 

E.  H.  Meerell. 


BROWNING'S   PHILOSOPHY. 


In  that  European  capital  which  is  especially  distiiifjuished  for 
its  art  treasures,  one  Master  pre-eminently,  a  native  of  the  land, 
has  left  his  record  on  its  walls.  With  a  firm  hand,  and  in  glow- 
ing colors,  he  reproduces  the  life  of  his  own  age  ;  Kings  and 
Queens  and  courtiers,  warriers,  artisans,  gay  revellers,  hermits, 
beggars,  saints.  It  needs  but  an  enchanters  wand  and  the  fig- 
ures of  Yelasquez  would  leap  from  the  canvas  with  human  pas- 
sions, love  and  hate,  cruelty  and  craft,  as  they  lived,  spoke  and 
acted  more  that  two  centuries  ago.  Such  a  great  magician,  such 
a  surpassing  artist,  we  invoke  when  we  speak  the  name  of 
Robert  Browning. 

In  his  long  list  of  writings  appear  a  medley  of  characters, 
created  by  the  hand  of  genius ;  each  true  to  its  type,  yet  of  dis- 
tinct individuality  ;  and  each  working  out  its  appointed  purpose 
in  the  author's  mind  ;  as  he  says  himself, 

"  Love,  you  saw  me  gather  men  and  women 
"  Live  or  dead  or  fashioned  by  my  fanc}^ 
"  Enter  each  and  all  and  use  that  service." 

Through  study  of  these  characters,  their  "Joys  and  sorrows, 
hopes  and  fears,  belief  and  disbelieving  "  the  disciple  of  Brown- 
ing arrives  at  his  philosophy. 

Its  fundamental  principle  is  generally  admitted  to  be  the  pos- 
sibility and  -grandeur  of  soul-development — an  advancement 
gained  through  manifold  experience.  Divine  love  and  human 
passion,  disappointment,  failure,  even  sin,  are  important  ele- 
ments. 

Growth  there  must  be,  if  there  is  life ;  "  Progress,  man's 
distinctive  mark  alone,  not  God's  and  not  the  beasts  ; "  with 
growth,  even  distorted,  one-sided  ultimately  comes  expansion ; 
defeat  ends  in  triumph ;  the  soul  attains. 

(55) 


56  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING    CLUB. 

In  the  tlii'ee  earliest  poems  this  is  the  grand  idea.  In  Pau- 
line the  soul-history  absorbs  the  whole  monologue.  In  Sordello 
it  runs  a  thread  of  thrilling  interest  through  the  confused  pic- 
ture of  Lombard  life  in  the  daj's  of  the  Troubadors.  In  Para- 
celsus is  portrayed  what  seems  like  the  decay  of  the  soul — an 
earnest  youth  seeking  knowledge  for  its  best  use  ends  as  a 
broken  down  charlatan — and  yet  through  apparent  failure  comes 
the  awakening  to  truth.  With  "God's  lamp  pressed  close  to 
his  heart  "  Paracelsus  expires. 

Worldly  success  is  never  the  reward  which  Browning's  ro- 
mance bestows  upon  its  heroes.  The  Provencal  minstrel,  with 
his  last  breath  trampling  on  the  Imperial  badge,  the  Great  Doc- 
tor in  the  mad-house  cell,  these  have  another  recompense  than 
that  of  earth.  The  little  silk-winder,  whose  insignificant  exis- 
tence moves  in  one  da}'^  so  many  of  the  great  world  above  her, 
goes  back  to  the  factory  ignorant  of  the  higher  fate  to  which 
her  birth  assigned  her.  The  wonderful  influence  Pippa  works 
upon  such  diflierent  characters,  was  as  subtle  as  the  electric  fluid 
which  quivers  in  the  still  atmosphere  of  a  summer  night,  l^oth- 
ing  illustrates  better  the  soul-philosophy  of  the  great  poet  than 
this  short  drama.  ]S^o  effect  of  personal  contact  turns  the  scale ; 
no  social  supremacy ;  no  words  of  wisdom  ;  neither  flattery  nor 
sarcasm ;  but  the  unrecognized  presence  of  one  pure  being, 
guileless  and  single  minded,  wrought  the  change  which  lifted 
each  actor  to  a  higher  stage  in  the  great  evolution.  So  it  was, 
in  a  still  more  marked  degree  with  Pompilia,  moving  in  maiden 
innocence  amid  corrupting  influences  in  the  town,  in  the  Church, 
in  her  home.  The  divine  spark  in  her  breast  awoke  an  answer- 
ing fire  in  the  heart  of  the  frivolous  young  priest,  and  through 
him  kindled  into  enthusiasm  Roman  lawyers,  the  ignorant  popu- 
lace, even  the  cynical  worldlings  of  the  Court.  The  grand  old 
Pope  himself  felt  the  celestial  flame  of  that  child-like  spirit, 
and  spread  its  radiance  in  a  sublime  burst  of  eloquence. 

In  A  Blot  in  the  Scutcheon  the  interest  centers  on  the 
rapid  development  of  noble  qualities  through  secret  guilt,  and 


MISS    HUNTINGTON    ON   BROWNING's   PHILOSOPHY.  57 

in  spite  of  the  tragedy  we  feel  that  there  was  a  triumph  at  the 
end.  Although  a  stern  moralist  might  shrink  from  such  an  in- 
terpretation tliere  can  be  no  doubt  it  is  what  the  author  intended. 
In  stating  Browning's  philosophy  one  must  admit  that  it  regards 
deliberate  sin  and  unrestrained  passion  as  factors  in  soul  regene- 
ration, or  at  least  as  stages  in  soul-advancement.  The  fascina- 
tion of  psychological  analysis  leads  to  the  depiction  of  intrica- 
cies and  tortuous  windings  of  the  human  heart  and  conscience 
which  seem  at  times  like  bewildering  sophistry. 

A  grander  note  is  sounded  in  the  exaltation  of  love,  as  the 
true  mainspring  of  action  throughout  the  poems  and  dramas. 

"  All  the  world  is  beauty,  and  knowing  this  is  love  and  love 
is  duty  "  ; 

"  Life  is  just  our  chance  in  the  prize  of  loving  love  " ; 

"  Since  we  love  we  know  enough  "  ;  and 

"  Love  bids  touch  truth,  endure  truth  and  embrace  truth  "  ; 

"  Love  preceding  power,  and  with  much  power  always  much 
more  love  " ; 

With  the  fifty  men  and  women  this  is  the  controlling  influ- 
ence and  among  them  many  different  aspects  of  love  are  pre- 
sented, culminating  in  the  intense  devotion  and  exquisite  tender- 
ness of  the  verses  addressed  to  his  wife.  In  those  of  later  years 
inspired  by  her  memory  is  a  clear  unwavering  belief  in  immor- 
tality which  lifts  into  a  higher  atmosphere  the  bond  uniting 
them  on  earth. 

It  is  in  relation  to  the  belief  in  a  future  life  that  we  meet  an- 
other tenet  of  the  poet's  philosophical  creed,  namely — the  inevit- 
able imperfection  and  limitation  of  this  existence  and  the  need  of 
waiting  for  another  sphere  to  complete  the  development  of  the 
soul.  This  is  the  key  note  of  Sordello^  where  the  plague-spot  is 
"  Thrusting  in  time  eternity's  concern." 

Kabbi  Ben  Ezra  says : — 

"  For  thence — a  paradox 

"  Which  comforts  while  it  mocks — 

"  Shall  life  succeed  in  that  it  seems  to  fail  ? " 


58  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

And  Bishop  Blougram  : — 

"  Not  to  fancy  what  were  fair  in  life, 

"  Provided  it  could  be, — but  finding  first 

"  What  may  be,  then  find  how  to  make  it  fair — 

"  Up  to  our  means,  a  very  different  thing." 

Most  consoling  is  the  idea  as  expressed  in  the  lines  on  a  group 
of  two  mutes : — 

"  Only  the  prism's  obstruction  shows  aright 
"  The  secret  of  a  sunbeam,  breaks  its  light 
"  Into  the  jewelled  bow,  from  blankest  white, 
"  So  may  a  glory  from  defect  arise." 

And  the  same  thought  is  distinctly  conveyed  in  Andrea  del 
Sarto : — 

"  Ah  !  but  a  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp, 
"  Or  what's  a  heaven  for  ? " 

It  is  suggested  by  the  difficulty  of  adjustment  to  finite  life  which 
Lazarus  feels  in  returning  to  earth,  "  It  should  be  "  balked  by 
"  here  it  cannot  be,"  as  the  Arab  Physician  expresses  it.  This  is 
a  lesson  which  can  be  profitably  learned  only  in  the  clear  light  of 
that  anticipation  of  a  grander  and  higher  life  which  distinguishes 
Browning  from  many  writers  of  the  time.  Where  even  Tenny- 
son hesitates  he  never  falters.  From  his  boyhood's  verse  to  the 
old  man's  Epilogue  rings  throughout  the  clear  affirmation  of  belief 
in  the  unending  life  of  the  soul,  and  up  to  this  one  point  in  the 
recognition  of  a  great  First  Cause  all  his  philosophy  tends. 

The  burden  of  social  problems  which  weighs  so  heavily  on 
thinkers  of  the  present  day  never  disturbs  his  buoyant  optimism. 
Assuming  as  he  does  that  this  world  is  but  the  portal  to  an  end- 
less life  he  views  calmly  the  incompleteness,  the  wasted  oppor- 
tunities and  thwarted  purposes  which  seem  to  many  of  us  so  pre- 
plexing  an  element  in  human  affairs.  To  him  blighted  careers 
and  lives  of  promise  cut  short  are — 

"  On  earth  the  broken  arcs,  in  the  lieaven  a  perfect  round." 


MISS    HFNTINGTON   ON    BROWNINg's   PHILOSOPHY.  59 

The  discordant  notes  of  this  planet  will  be  part  of  the  grand 
harmony  of  the  hereafter.  "  Even  hate  is  but  a  mask  of  love  "  ; 
there  is  "  Good  in  evil  and  hope  in  ill  success." 

This  grand  sweep  of  outlook,  this  ardent  and  radiant  belief  is 
characteristic  of  a  poet  whose  gaze  has  been  rather  far  up  into 
the  heavens  than  down  on  the  base  things  of  earth.  If  the  image 
of  down-trodden  humanity  suffering  from  sore  injustice  arouses 
in  Browning  no  indignation,  it  is  perhaps  because  he  especially 
of  all  sages  in  our  time  has  bent  his  vision  starward  into  infinite 
space ;  "  Look  east  where  whole  new  thousands  are  "  ;  and  into 
eternity,  reading  there  the  purposes  of  the  Almighty. 

In  our  day  and  generation  there  may  be  great  reformers,  elo- 
quent preachers,  sweet  singers — there  will  not  soon  arise  another 
philosopher  like  Robert  Browning.  If  he  never  becomes  the 
poet  of  the  people  he  has  left  a  message  to  be  transmitted  to 
them.  It  may  be  one  side  of  the  truth  to  teach  that  "  when 
pain  ends  gain  ends  too,"  that  out  of  failure  comes  attainment  and 
out  of  evil  good  ;  that  this  world  must  be  of  one  limited  oppor- 
tunity and  that  "  imperfection  is  perfection  hid."  But  to  many 
darkened  souls  such  a  philosophy  will  be  one  of  enlightenment 
and  a  widening  of  vision  towards  revelation  itself.  If  those  of 
us  who  are  engaged  in  a  battle  with  evil  cannot  reconcile  our- 
selves to  its  existence,  even  through  the  eloquence  of  poetry,  we 
can  fully  and  freely  take  heart  from  the  strong  words  penned  at 
Asolo  last  September  : — 

"  At  noon-day  in  the  bustle  of  man's  work-time 

"  Greet  the  unseen  with  a  cheer  ! 

"  Bid  him  forward,  breast  and  back  as  either  should  be, 

"  Strive  and  thrive  !  cry  '  Speed,  fight  on,  fare  ever 

" '  There  as  here  ! '  " 

Arria  S.  Huntington. 


BROWNING  AS  A  DRAMATIST. 


Browning  is  essentially  a  dramatic  poet.  He  loves  to  express 
abstract  thoughts  in  a  concrete  fashion.  He  never  allegorizes. 
His  characters  are  always  real  flesh  and  blood,  and  their  thoughts 
are  a  natural  part  of  them. 

Some  time  ago,  I  was  invited  to  attend  the  Browning  Club  in 
a  great  city,  renowned  for  its  thought  and  culture.  I  heard  The 
Flight  of  the  Duchess  beautifully  read,  and  afterwards  com- 
mented upon.  One  gentleman  made  a  most  interesting  and 
poetic  speech,  in  which  he  set  forth  that  the  Duchess  was  The 
Soul  dissatisfied  with  its  mean  surroundings,  and  aspiring  heaven- 
ward towards  larger  Freedom  and  Light.  The  Duke  was 
"Prosaic  Circumstance,"  that  seeks  to  chain  down  the  "Aspir- 
"  ing  Soul."  The  Gypsy  was  "  Opportunity  "  or  something  of 
the  sort.  When  he  had  sat  down,  the  president  called  upon  me 
for  a  few  remarks ;  and  I  found,  to  my  astonishment,  that  I  was 
looked  upon  with  great  reverence  in  my  representative  capacity 
as  being  at  the  time  president  of  the  oldest  Browning  Club  then 
existing  in  the  country.  He  asked  me  to  explain  to  the  younger 
club  the  secret  of  our  success  and  our  permanence.  I  said  first, 
that  we  had  all  manner  of  minds  in  our  club.  Catholic,  Episco- 
palian, Presbyterian,  Congregationalist,  Methodist,  Unitarian, 
Hebrew ;  that  the  freest  discussion,  theological  or  other,  accom- 
panied by  the  deepest  respect  for  each  other's  honest  thought, 
was  the  unwritten  law  of  the  club.  We  had  our  allegorical  minds, 
too,  as  well  as  those  prosaic  literal  minds,  whom  I  myself  may 
represent.  We  had  those  who  could  not  only  deeply  appreciate, 
as  I  myself  could  do,  but  also  cordially  agree,  to  the  smallest 
particular,  with  the  splendid  exposition  of  the  gentleman  who 
had  just  sat  down  ;  while  the  prosaic  party,  to  which  I  myself 

(60) 


KEV.    MR.    CALTHEOP    ON   BROWING   AS    A    DRAMATIST.  61 

belong,  would  say,  "  it  is  all  very  beautiful,  but  the  trouble  is 
"  that  it  is  not  Browning."  The  Duchess  is  not  "  The  Soul,"  but  a 
very  lovely  young  person,  who  at  last  becomes  wearied  to  death 
with  the  Duke,  who  is  not  "  Prosaic  Circumstance,"  but  an  ex- 
ceedingly prosaic,  pedantic  and  over-bearing  individual :  while 
the  Gypsy  is  just  a  gypsy  and  that  is  all,  who  to  the  day  of  her 
death  will  be  filled  with  the  wild  desire  for  the  free  life  of  hill 
and  dale,  which  all  wild  creatures  feel.  It  is  for  just  this 
life  that  the  young  Duchess  pants. 

We  had  a  grand  battle  over  the  splendid  invocation  to  "  Lj^ic 
"Love"  in  The  Ring  and  the  Book. 

"  O  Lyric  Love,  half-angel  and  half-bird 

"  And  all  a  wonder  and  a  wild  desire, — 

"  Boldest  of  hearts  that  ever  braved  the  sun, 

"  Took  sanctuary  within  the  holier  blue, 

"  And  sang  a  kindred  soul  out  of  his  face, — 

"  Yet  human  at  the  red-ripe  of  the  heart, — 

"  When  the  first  summons  from  the  darkling  earth 

"  Reached  thee  amid  thy  chambers,  blanched  their  blue, 

"  And  bared  them  of  the  glory — to  drop  down, 

"  To  toil  for  man,  to  suffer  or  to  die, — 

"  This  is  the  same  voice  :  can  thy  soul  know  change  ? 

"  Hail  then,  and  barken  from  the  realms  of  help  ! 

"  Never  may  I  commence  my  song,  my  due 

"  To  God  who  best  taught  song  by  gift  of  thee, 

"  Except  with  bent  head  and  beseeching  hand — 

"  That  still,  despite  the  distance  and  the  dark, 

"  What  was,  again  my  be  ;  some  interchange 

"  Of  grace,  some  splendor  once  thy  very  thought, 

"  Some  benediction  anciently  thy  smile  : 

" — Never  conclude,  but  raising  hand  and  head 

"  Thither  where  eyes,  that  cannot  reach,  yet  yearn 

"  For  all  hope,  all  sustainment,  all  reward, 

"  Their  upmost  up  and  on, — so  blessing  back 

"  In  those  thy  realms  of  help,  that  heaven  thy  home, 


62  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING    CLUB. 

"  Some  whiteness  which,  I  judge,  thy  face  makes  proud, 
"  Some  wanness  where,  I  think,  thy  foot  may  fall ! " 

Our  allegorical  friends  were  united  as  one  man  or  one  woman 
in  the  conviction  that  "  Lyric  Love  "  personfied  "  Inspiration  " 
"  the  Heavenly  Muse,"  etc.,  and  grappled  with  perfect  success 
with  such  expressions  as  "Boldest  of  hearts  that  ever  braved. the 
"  sun,"  and  "  human  at  the  red-ripe  of  the  heart,"  "  the  summons 
"from  the  darkling  earth,  "  to  suffer  or  to  die,"  "  reached  thee 
amid  thy  chambers,"  etc. — while  we  Realists  insisted  that  it  was 
an  invocation  to  the  spirit  of  Mrs.  Browning  in  Heaven.  The 
debate  was  long  and  loud,  and  it  was  adjourned  with  divided 
honors,  as  we  only  possessed  the  first  volume.  Before  the  next 
meeting,  however,  the  second  had  come  to  hand,  and  to  a  crowd- 
ed club  in  breathless  silence,  I  read  the  concluding  words  of  the 
poem: — 

" . . . .  Lyric  Love, 
"  Thy  rare  gold  ring  of  verse  (the  poet  praised) 
"  Linking  our  England  to  this  Italy ! " 

The  uncommon  candor  of  our  Allegorical  friends  was  never 
more  clearly  shown  than  at  that  moment,  when  they  one  and  all 
gracefully  surrendered.  When,  however,  we  came  to  Childe 
Roland  to  the  Dark  Tower  Came  there  was  once  more  a 
gathering  of  the  clans,  and  a  beautiful  paper  was  read  from 
"  Unity,"  which  explained  in  the  most  complete  manner  the  ex- 
act inward  significance  of  the  "  Cripple,"  "  The  old  lean  horse  ;" 
the  barren  land,  etc.,  and  reached  a  magnificent  climax  in  the 
undoubted  fact,  that  the  "  Little  bitter  brook  "  meant  "  Alcohol ! '' 

The  genius  of  Browning,  then,  is  dramatic.  When  Pippa 
passes,  it  is  just  a  pure,  fresh,  loving  maiden  that  passes,  and  it  is 
just  her  sweet  young  maidenhood  that  causes  her  presence  and 
her  voice  to  charm  away  the  ill  demons  of  lust  and  hate  as  she 
passes. 

And  above  all,  our  Pompilia  is  just  God's  highest  and  best 
gift  to  this  earth,  a  pure  and  noble  woman.  Our  Caponsacchi 
is  a  brave  and  true  man  awakening  from  an  ignoble  sleep.     Our 


EEV.    MR.    CALTHROP    ON    BROWNING    AS    A    DRAMATIST.  63 

Pope  is  a  good  and  grand  old  man,  giving  to  the  world  the  deep 
lessons  learned  in  a  life  spent  in  doing  good. 

I  cannot  even  attempt  in  ten  minutes  to  name  those  poems  of 
Browning  which  are  dramatic  in  form,  I  will  simply  say  a  few 
words  about  his  dramas  that  are  translated  from  the  Greek  or 
are  Greek  in  substance.  One  conspicuous  failure  is  Agamem- 
non. Two  erroneous  ideas  seem  to  have  been  at  the  bottom  of 
this;  one  that  ^schylus's  stately  iambics  can  possibly  be  rep- 
resented by  the  incessant  jig  of  an  eleven-syllabled  verse,  the 
fact  being  that  our  ordinary  blank  verse  is  an  almost  perfect 
representation  of  the  Greek  iambic  ;  the  other  is  the  impossible 
attempt  at  exact  literalness,  which,  coupled  with  the  use  of  fan- 
tastic words,  makes  the  translation  quite  as  difficult  as  the 
original.  On  the  other  hand,  Balaustion^s  Adventure  and 
Aristojphanes' s  Apology  must   be   pronounced  a  great  success. 

The  second  reason  for  our  permanence,  which  I  gave  to  the 
younger  club,  was,  that  we  assigned  to  each  person  his  work, 
and  that  we  resolved  to  pass  over  no  allusion  and  to  leave  no 
difficulty  unexplained.  In  our  work  on  Aristophanes' s  Apology 
we  found  that  Browning  had  not  only  prepared  himself  for 
writing  by  the  careful  reading  of  all  Aristophanes's  plays  and 
all  his  fragments,  but  that  he  had  also  carefully  read  the  Greek 
Scholiasts,  with  their  notes  on  the  plays.  It  was  only  such 
thorough  work  as  this,  that  enabled  him  to  give  that  astonishing 
reproduction  of  Greek  life,  manners  and  thought,  which  renders 
this  part  of  our  poet's  work  so  unique. 

S.  E..  Calthrop. 


SOME  OF  BROWNING'S  BELIEFS. 


We  meet  to-night  to  commemorate  tlie  death  of  the  greatest 
English  writer  since  Shakspere,  the  only  English  writer  who  can 
be  compared  with  Shakspere. 

"  Shakspere  was  not  our  poet,  but  the  world's : 
"  Therefore  on  him  no  speech  ;  and  brief  for  thee, 
"  Browning.     Since  Chaucer  was  alive  and  hale 
"  No  man  hath  walked  along  our  roads  with  step 
"  So  active,  so  inquiring  eye,  or  tongue 
"  So  varied  in  discourse." — Landor. 

"By  far  the  richest  nature  of  our  times,"  says  James  Russell 
Lowell. —  "It  is  plain  truth  to  say  that  no  other  English  poet, 
"  living  or  dead,  Shakspere  excepted,  has  so  heaped  up  human 
"  interest    for  his  readers  as  has  Robert  Browning,"  says   the 

author    of    "  Obiter    DictaP     "  Mr.    Browning    exhibits a 

"  wealth  of  intellect  and  a  profusion  of  spiritual  insight  which  we 
"  have  been  accustomed  to  find  in  the  pages  of  Shakspere,  and 
"  in  those  pages  only,"  says  Robert  Buchanan,  in  his  essays  on 
"  Master  Spirits." — "  We  must  record  at  once  our  conviction 
"  not  merely  that  The  Ring  and  the  Book  is  beyond  parallel  the 
"  supremest  poetical  achievement  of  our  time,"  wrote  a  critic  in 
the  Athenceum^,  "  but  that  it  is  the  most  precious  and  profound 
"  spiritual  treasure  that  England  has  produced  since  the  days  of 
"  Shakspere.  Its  intellectual  greatness  is  as  nothing  compared 
"  with  its  transcendent  spiritual  teaching."  Or,  as  Archdeacon 
Farrar  puts  it : 

"  He  has  produced  not  a  book  but  a  literature.  To  have  stud- 
"ied  and  understood  him  is  a  liberal  education.  With  the  ex- 
"  ception  of  Shakspere  there  is  literally  no  poet,  living  or  dead, 

(64) 


MR.    BARDEEN   ON    SOME    OF   BROWNINg's    BELIEFS.  65 

"  in  whom  we  can  find  so  marvellous  a  portrait-gallery  of  living 
"characters.  He  has  borrowed  his  jewels  from  the  East  and 
"  from  the  "West ;  from  art,  from  nature,  and  from  the  schools  ; 
"from  the  classics,  the  Rabbis,  the  Renaissance;  from  Greece, 
"  Italy,  Palestine,  France,  England,  Bagdad,  America,  Russia  ; 
"from  legend  and  history,  from  fancy  and  imagination,  from 
"kings,  paupers,  revolutionists,  factory-girls,  mystic  dreamers, 
"  gay  cavaliers,  Jews,  noble  and  base,  duchesses,  musicians, 
"poets,  painters,  dervishes,  saints,  reformers,  heretics;  from 
"  every  passion  that  could  ennoble  or  debase,  dilate  or  contract, 
"  elevate  or  ruin  the  human  soul ;  above  all  from  love ;  from 
"  love  in  every  one  of  its  manifestations." 

The  time  has  passed  for  criticisms  upon  his  style,  and  jokes  as 
to  his  intelligibility.  "Better  say  to  the  first  fool  who  says  he 
"cannot  understand  Browning,"  remarked  the  Rev.  Edward 
Everett  Hale,  "I  am  sorry  for  you,  but  I  think  I  can."  Bee- 
thoven was  in  his  time  called  no  musician  ;  Chopin  said  of  him 
that  he  had  stretched  his  art  to  express  subjects  beyond  its  range, 
till  his  art  ceased  to  be  art.  He  was  told  of  a  certain  passage  in 
one  of  his  works  that  it  was  "  not  allowed."  "  Then,"  said  he, 
"  I  allow  it ;  let  that  be  its  justification."  Wagner  contended 
all  his  life  with  such  criticism,  but  who  now  cares  to  argue  with 
those  who  think  the  pretty  twinklings  of  Bellini  more  melodi- 
ous ?  One  of  Wagner's  disciples  has  drawn  a  just  parallel  be- 
tween his  art  and  Browning's  : 

"  It  seems  to  me  that  each  speaks  in  a  language  that  he  him- 
"  self  has  created  as  a  fitting  vehicle  for  the  conveyance  of  his 
"  thoughts.  Each  has  an  individual  method  of  composing  and 
"  working  out  his  theme,  and  each  by  his  contribution  to  art  has 
"substantially  widened  its  sphere  and  range.  ■?«•  *  *  One 
"  more  analogy  between  them  is  their  exaltation,  their  extasy, 
"  and  the  clairvoyance  of  their  unconscious  creature  instinct  that 
"  was  their  salient  characteristic.  They  wrote  just  as  this  in- 
"  stinct  prompted  them  ;  you  might  disagree  with  them  or  agree 
"  with  them,  what  they  sung  might  be  congenial  or  uncongenial, 


66  MEMORIAL    MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING    CLUB. 

"  but  it  must  be  written  or  sung.  This  is  what  differentiates 
"such  men  of  genius  from  men  of  talent.  An  idea  seizes  hold  of 
"  them,  and  it  will  not  relax  its  grasp  until  it  is  worked  out." — 
B.  L.  Mozeley. 

Browning  himself  wrote  in  18Y2  : 

"Nor  do  I  apprehend  any  more  charges  of  being  wilfully  ob- 
"scure,  unconscientious!}'^  careless,  or  perversely  harsh.  Having 
"  hitherto  done  my  utmost  in  the  art  to  which  my  life  is  a  devo- 
"  tion,  I  cannot  engage  to  increase  the  effort ;  but  I  conceive  that 
"  there  may  be  helpful  light,  as  well  as  re-assuring  warmth,  in 
"the  attention  and  sympathy  I  gratefully  acknowledge."^ 

As  has  been  so  often  demonstrated,  the  difficulties  in  Brown- 
ing are  not  in  the  expression  but  in  the  thought.  His  are  no 
poems 

"  To  turn  the  page,  and  let  the  senses  drink 
"  A  lay  that  shall  not  trouble  them  to  think."  ^ 

"  One  word  on  the  obscurity  of  Sordello,^^  says  Edward  Dow- 
den.  "  It  arises  not  so  much  from  the  peculiarities  of  style.  .  .  . 
"  as  from  the  unrelaxing  demand  which  is  made  throughout  upon 
"the  intellectual  and  imaginative  energy  and  alertness  of  the 
"  reader." — Speaking  of  the  Tomb  in  St.  PraxedJ's  Ruskin  says : 
"  I  know  of  no  other  piece  of  modern  English  prose  or  poetry,  in 
"  which  there  is  so  much  told  as  in  these  lines  of  Renaissance 
"  spirit.  .  .  .  It  is  nearly  all  that  I  have  said  of  the  central 
"Renaissance  in  thirty  pages  of  the  'Stones  of  Yenice.' "^ — 
Swinburne  is  indignantly  emphatic : 

"  Now  if  there  is  any  great  quality  more  perceptible  than  an- 
"  other  in  Mr.  Browning's  intellect,  it  is  his  decisive  and  incisive 
"quality  of  thought,  his  sureness  and  intensity  of  perception,  his 
"  rapid  and  trenchant  resolution  of  aim.  To  charge  him  with 
"  obscurity  is  about  as  correct  as  to  call  Lynceus  purblind,  or  com- 

1  Preface  to  Selections. 

2  Quoted  in  "  Ohiter  Dicta.'" 

3  "  Modern  Painters,"  lY.  379. 


ME.  BARDEEN   ON    SOME    OF   BROWNING's   BELIEFS.  67 

"  plain  of  the  slowness  of  the  telegraph  wires.  He  is  something 
"  too  much  the  reverse  of  obscure  ;  he  is  too  brilliant  and  subtle 
"  for  the  ready  reader  of  a  ready  writer  to  follow  with  any  cer- 
"  tainty  the  track  of  an  intelligence  which  moves  with  such  in- 
"cessant  rapidity.  .  .  .  He  never  thinks  but  at  full  speed  ; 
"  and  his  rate  of  thought  is  to  that  of  another  man's  as  the  speed 
"  of  a  railway  train  is  to  that  of  a  wagon,  or  the  speed  of  a  tele- 
"  graph  to  that  of  a  railway."  ^ 

In  considering  the  form  of  his  poetry  we  must  not  forget  how 
ever-present  is  his  humor,  "  the  last  touch  and  perfection  of  the 
"  human  faculties,"  as  Carlyle  calls  it.  "  The  grotesque  rhymes 
"  of  Browning,"  says  John  Skelton,  "  like  the  poetic  conceits  of 
"  Shakspere,  are  merely  the  holiday  frolic  of  a  rich  and  viva- 
"  cious  imagination."     Lowell  has  said  : 

"  His  humor  is  as  genuine  as  that  of  Carlyle,  and  if  his  mirth 
"has  not  the  'earthquake'  character  with  which  Emerson  has  so 
"happily  labelled  the  shaggy  merriment  of  that  Jean  Paul 
"  Burns,  yet  it  is  always  sincere  and  hearty,  and  there  is  a  tone 
"of  meaning  in  it  which  always  sets  us  thinking." 

So  when  we  miss  the  point  of  some  apparently  uncouth  verse, 
we  may  be  sure  it  has  for  those  in  closer  sympathy  with  the 
poet's  thought  a  special  meaning  that  could  not  otherwise  have 
been  expressed. 

But  if  he  did  not  write  for  all,  and  he  did  not  pretend  to  or 
try  to,  he  gave  to  those  who  have  found  he  has  something  to 
say  to  them  a  broader,  fuller,  richer  body  of  verse  than  is  to  be 
found  elsewhere  in  literature.  He  was  a  poet,  and  among  the 
half-dozen  greatest  poets  ;  but  to  his  disciples  he  is  more  than  a 
poet.  A  recent  Leipzig  graduate  has  published  a  monograph  on 
the  versification  of  Pope.  He  occupies  a  hundred  and  forty- 
four  octavo  pages  in  mathematical  calculations  of  the  number  of 
imperfect  rhymes,  weak  endings,  misplaced  caesuras  to  be  found 
in  the  writings  of  this  little  crooked  thing  that  asked  questions. 

1  Preface  to  Works  of  Marlow. 


68  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

The  work  is  well  done  and  not  without  usefulness,  but  who  of 
us  cares  to  know  how  often  Kobert  Browning  used  expressions 
that  would  not  seem  euphonious  to  Goold  Brown  ? 

It  is  not  how  he  says  but  what  he  says  that  makes  Browning's 
relation  to  his  reader  so  peculiar.  A  comparison  with  the  Lau- 
reate, 80  natural  in  this  as  in  other  matters,  will  illustrate  this. 
Tennj^son  has  reached  the  heart  of  all  the  world.  In  childhood, 
in  manhood,  in  age ;  in  self-musing,  in  love,  in  bereavement, — 
even  in  contemplation  of  the  problems  of  the  day,  he  has 
touched  almost  every  chord,  and  always  with  a  perfection  that 
makes  his  expression  seem  the  only  one  adequate.  But  who  of 
us  has  learned  much  from  Tennyson  ?  He  has  given  more  per- 
fect expression  to  the  thoughts  and  feelings  we  have  had  ;  he 
has  defined  into  constellations  the  nebulae  of  our  consciousness  ; 
but  have  we  ever  looked  upon  him  as  a  leader?  Take  "The 
Princess,"  for  instance.  He  treats  the  question  of  woman's 
higher  education  gracefully,  he  reaches  conclusions  that  are 
pedagogically  sound,  and  he  has  given  to  many  of  the  arguments 
a  form  that  can  never  be  surpassed.  Yet  who  quotes  Tennyson 
as  an  authority  on  the  education  of  women  ?  Who  does  not 
remember  less  what  he  said  than  the  perfect  way  in  which  he 
said  it? 

Now  contrast  with  this  the  effect  of  Browning's  Andrea  del 
Sarto.  It  is  as  exquisitively  perfect  in  form,  but  is  that  what 
we  remember  the  poem  by  ?  Did  it  not  create  for  us  a  person- 
ality we  can  never  forget,  a  criticism  that  can  never  be  disturbed  ? 
Enter  any  gallery  in  Europe,  and  you  will  find  your  eye  resting 
on  the  del  Sarto  pictures  with  the  peculiar  interest  that  would 
attach  to  those  painted  by  a  friend.  Irresistibly  and  willingly 
you  find  yourself  carried  back  to  the  studio  where  the  painter, 

"  often  much  wearier  than  you  think," 
looked  on 

"  My  face,  my  moon,  my  everybody's  moon, 

"  Which  everybody  looks  on  and  calls  his, 

"  And,  I  suppose,  is  looked  on  by  in  turn, 

"  While  she  looks — no  one's :  very  dear,  no  less  I " 


MR.    BAKDEEN    ON    SOME   OF   BROWNINg's   BELIEFS.  69 

Not  all  the  critics  that  have  ever  written  can  affect  the  view 
of  the  painter  and  his  works  that  Browning  has  fixed  within  you. 
Where  else  out  of  Shakspere  are  there  men  and  women  so 
real  as  those  of  Browning?     Go  to  Rome,  and  where  Caesar  and 
Augustus  and  Nero  are  names  to  you,   Pompilia  is  a  person. 
You  look  in  your  guide-book  for  the  historical  associations  that 
linger  about  the  great  monuments  of  the  world's  history,  and 
feel  that  you  are  conscientiously  supplementing  your  study  of 
the  past.     But  when  you  pass  down  Yia  Yittoria,  the  "  aspecta- 
ble  street "  where  Pompilia  lived,  it  needs  no  effort  to  look  for 
"  the  poor  Yirgin  that  I  used  to  know 
"  At  our  street  corner  in  a  lonely  niche, — 
"  The  babe  that  sat  upon  her  knees,  broke  off, — 
"  Thin  white  glazed  clay,  you  pitied  her  the  more  : 
"She,  not  the  gay  ones,  always  got  ray  rose."^ 

Among  all  the  memories  of  the  square  near  by  you  do  not 
forget  the 

"  foreigner  had  trained  a  goat, 
"  A  shuddering  white  woman  of  a  beast, 
"  To  climb  up,  stand  straight  on  a  pile  of  sticks 
"  Put  close,  which  gave  the  creature  room  enough  : 
"  When  she  was  settled  there  he,  one  by  one, 
"  Took  away  all  the  sticks,  left  just  the  four 
"  Whereon  the  little  hoofs  did  really  rest ; 
"  There  she  kept  firm,  all  underneath  was  air."i 
And  when  you  come  to  San  Lorenzo  in  Lucina,  you  recollect 
it   not   as   containing   the   tomb   of  Nicholas   Poussin,   but   as 
Pompilia's 

"  own  particular  place." 

You  stand  by  the  aliar  rail  and  give  the  sexton  his  lira  to  un- 
curtain Guido's  Crucifixion,  but  what  you  fix  in  mind  is  that 
this  was  the  scene  of  that  unhappy  marriage. 
"  However  I  was  hurried  through  the  storm, 
"  Next  dark  eve  of  December's  deadest  day — 

1  Ming  and  the  Book. 


70 


MEMORIAL   MEETING,   SYBACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 


"  How  it  rained  ! — through  our  street  and  the  Lion's  mouth, 

"  And  the  bit  of  Corso, — cloaked  round,  covered  close, 

"  I  was  like  something  strange  or  contraband, — 

"  Into  blank  San  Lorenzo,  up  the  aisle, 

"  My  mother  keeping  hold  of  me  so  tight, 

"  I  fancied  we  were  come  to  see  a  corpse 

"  Before  the  altar  which  she  pulled  me  toward. 

"  There  were  found  waiting  an  unpleasant  priest 

"  Who  proved  to  be  the  brother,  not  our  parish  friend, 

"  But  one  with  mischief- making  mouth  and  eye, 

"  Paul,  whom  I  know  since  to  my  cost.     And  then 

''  I  heard  the  heavy  church-door  lock  out  help 

"  Behind  us  :  for  the  customary  warmth 

"  Two  tapers  shivered  on  the  altar.     '  Quick — 

" '  Lose  no  time ! '  cried  the  priest.     And  straightway  down 

"  From . .  what's  behind  the  altar  where  he  hid — 

"  Hawk-nose  and  yellowish  and  bush  and  all, 

"  Stepped  Guido,  caught  my  hand,  and  there  was  I 

"  O'  the  chancel  and  the  priest  had  opened  book, 

"  Read  here  and  there,  made  me  say  that  and  this, 

"  And  after,  told  me  I  was  now  a  Wife."  ^ 

Browning  has  done  more  than  merely  to  show  us  these  men 

and  women.     He  has  shown  them  to  us  in  the  crises  of  their 

histories.     "  My  stress  lay  on  the  incidents  in  the  development 

"  of  a  soul :  little  else  is  worth  study,"  he  says  in  his  preface  to 

Sordello. 

"  The  soul  itself, 

"  Its  shifting  fancies  and  celestial  lights, 
"  With  all  its  grand  orchestral  silences 
"  To  keep  the  pauses  of  the  rhythmic  sounds."  * 
He  deals  with  real  things,  never  with  the  vague  and  incoher- 
ent images  that  some  call  fancy.     Whatever  he  writes 
"  if  cut  down  the  middle 


1  Ring  and  the  Book. 

2  Mrs.  Browning's  "  Aurora  Leigh." 


MR.    BARDEEN   ON    SOME    OF    BROWNING's   BELIEFS,  71 

"Shows    a    heart    within    blood-tinctured,    of   a   veined 
"humanity."  i 

He  realizes  the  saying  of  Goethe,  "The  poet  should  seize 
"the  particular,  and  he  should  if  there  be  anything  sound  thus 
"  represent ^the  universal,"  ;  and  that  of  Matthew  Arnold  : 

"  More  and  more  mankind  will  discover  that  we  have  to  turn 
"  to  poetry  to  interpret  life  for  us,  to  console  and  sustain  us. 
"  Science  will  appear  incomplete  without  it,  for  well  does  Words- 
"  worth  call  poetry  the  impassioned  expression  which  is  in  the 
"  countenance  of  all  science,  the  breath  and  finer  spirit  of  knowl- 
"  edge." 

What  of  the  universal  has  he  especially  represented  to  us  ?  In 
other  words,  what  are  the  beliefs  that  we  may  especially  charac- 
terize as  Browning's? 

I.  In  the  first  place  he  Relieves  in  Life — life  in  this  world,  in 
our  day  and  generation.     You  never  think  of  him  as 

"  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  thought." 

"  He  is  so  unmistakably  and  deliciously  alive,"  says  the  author 
of  Ohiter  Dicta,  and  Arthur  Symons  expands  the  thought : 

"  Of  all  poets  Mr.  Browning  is  the  healthiest  and  manliest ;  he 
"  is  one  of  the  '  substantial  men  '  of  whom  Landor  speaks.  His 
"genius  is  robust  with  vigorous  blood,  and  his  tone  has  the  cheeri- 
"  ness  of  intellectual  health.  The  most  subtle  of  minds,  his  is 
"  the  least  sickly.  The  wind  that  blows  on  his  pages  is  no  hot 
"and  languorous  breeze,  laden  with  scents  and  sweets,  but  a 
"  fresh  salt  wind  blowing  in  from  the  sea.  His  poetry  is  a  tonic, 
"  it  braces  and  invigorates.  '■  II  fait  vivre ses phrases,^  his  verses 
"  live  and  throb  with  life.  He  is  incomparably  plentiful  of  vital 
"heat,  so  thoroughly  and  delightfully  alive."' 

Browning  says  in  Saul : 

"  How  good  is  man's  life,  the  mere  living  !  how  fit  to  employ, 

"  All  the  heart  and  the  soul  and  the  senses  forever  in  joy." 

^  Mrs.  Browning's  "  Lady  Geraldine's  Courtship." 
3  "  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Browning,"  1886. 


Y2  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

And  in  At  the  Mermaid : 

"  Have  you  found  your  life  distasteful  ? 

"  My  life  did  and  does  smack  sweet. 
"  Was  your  youth  of  pleasure  wasteful  ? 

"  Mine  I  saved,  and  hold  complete. 
"  Do  your  joys  with  age  diminish  ? 

"  When  mine  fail  me,  I'll  complain. 
"Must  in  death  your  daylight  finish? 

"  My  sun  sets  to  rise  again." 

"  To  blend  a  profound  knowledge  of  human  nature,  a  keen 
"  perception  of  the  awful  problem  of  human  destiny,  with  the 
"  conservation  of  a  joyous  human  spirit,  to  know  and  not  despair 
"  of  them,  to  battle  with  one's  spiritual  foes  and  not  be  burdened 
"  by  them,  is  given  only  to  the  very  strong.  This  is  to  be  a  val- 
"  iant  and  unvanquished  soldier  of  humanity."  ^ 

II.  In  the  second  place,  he  is  the  poet  of  the  Positive  Virtues. 
His  St.  Peter  would  ask  of  men  not  whether  they  had  smoked 
cigarettes,  but  whether  they  had  accomplished  anything  in  life. 
"  Do  something,  produce  something.  .  .  in  God's  name,"  cried 
Carlyle.  Mrs.  Oliphant  chose  a  happy  title  for  her  "  Makers  of 
"Florence."     Browning  puts  the  emphasis  on  accomplishment. 

"  Do  thy  day's  work,  dare 

"  Refuse  no  help  thereto,  since  help  refused 

"  Is  hindrance  sought  and  found.     Win  but  the  race 

"  Who  shall  object,  '  He  tossed  there  wine  cups  off, 

"  '  And,  just  at  starting,  Lilith  kissed  hig  lips.' " 

His  favorite  among  the  gods  is  Hercules.     What  if  he  reason  : 

"  Count  the  day -by-day 
"  Existence  thine,  and  all  the  other  chance  ! 
"  Ay,  and  pay  homage  also  to,  by  far 
"  The  sweetest  of  divinities  for  man, 
"  Kupris !  Benignant  goddess  will  she  prove ! 
"  But  as  for  all  else,  leave  and  let  things  be  !  " 

1  "  Edinburgh  Eeview,"  July,  1869. 


MR.    BARDEEN    ON    SOME   OF   BROWNING's   BELIEFS.  73 

This  Browning  can  forgive,  for  Hercules  had 
"  the  authentic  sign  and  seal 
"  Of  Godship,  that  it  ever  waxes  glad 
"  And  more  glad,  until  gladness  blossoms,  bursts 
"  Into  a  rage  to  suffer  for  mankind.  "  ^ 

"God 
"  Ne'er  dooms  to  waste  the  strength  he  deigns  impart."  ' 

"  'Tis  work  for  work's  sake  that  man's  needing."  ' 

"  All  service  ranks  the  same  with  God."  * 

"  Then  welcome  each  rebuff 

"  That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough, 
"  Each  sting  that  bids,  nor  sit  nor  stand,  but  go  ! 

"  Be  our  joys  three  parts  pain  ! 

"  Strive  and  hold  cheap  the  strain  ! 
"  Learn,  nor  account  the  pang !     Dare,  never  grudge 
the  throe  !  "  ^ 

"  I  count  life  just  a  stuff 
"  To  try  the  soul's  strength  on."  ^ 

"  When  the  fight  begins  with  himself 
"  A  man's  worth  something."  "> 
"  How  carve  way  in  the  life  that  lies  before 
"  If  bent  on  groaning  ever  for  the  past  ?  "  * 
Even  if  the  end  be  base,  better  vigorously  strive  for  it  than 
weakly  and  aimlessly  long  for  it. 

"  I  hear  your  reproach — '  But  delay  was  best, 

"  '  For  their  end  was  a  crime  ! ' — Oh,  a  crime  will  do 

"  As  well,  I  reply,  to  serve  for  a  test, 

"  As  a  virtue  golden  through  and  through. 

"  Let  a  man  contend  to  the  uttermost 

"  For  his  life's  set  prize,  be  it  what  it  may  ! 

1  Balaustioii's  Adventure.  2  Paracelsus.  ^  Pacchiarotto. 
*  Pippa  Passes.  ^  Babhi  Ben  Ezra.  ^In  a  Balcony.  ''  Bishop 
BlougrarrCs  Apology. 


74  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    STEACITSE   BROWNING    CLUB. 

"  And  the  sin  I  impute  to  each  frustrate  ghost, 

"  Was  the  unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt  loin, 

"  Though  the  end  in  sight  was  a  crime  I  say. "  ^ 

Here  it  is  not  as  Stedman  supposes  ^  — Stedman,  who  thinks 
The  Ring  and  the  Book  began  to  show  the  decadence  of  Brown- 
ing's powers! — that  Browning  means  to  justify  adultery,  but 
that  for  this  couple  an  earnest  effort  of  any  kind  would  have 
been  a  step  upward. 

III.  In  the  third  place,  he  judges  men  hy  their  Effort,  not  by 
their  Accomplishment. 

"  'Tis  not  what  man  Does  that  exalts  him,  but  what  man 
Would  do."  3 

"  What  I  aspired  to  be 

"  And  was  not,  comforts  me."  * 

Who  shall  say  what  insurmountable  obstacles  prevented  at- 
tainment here? 

"  A  tree  born  to  erectness  of  bole, 

"  Palm,  or  plane  or  pine,  we  laud  if  lofty,  columnar — 

"  Little  if  athwart,  askew, — leave  to  the  axe  and  the  flame ! 

"  Where  is  the  vision  may  penetrate  earth  and  beholding  ac- 
knowledge 

"  Just  one  pebble  at  root  ruined  the  straightness  of  stem  ? 

"  Whose  fine  vigilance  follows  the  sapling,  accounts  for  the 
failure, 

"  Here  blew  wind,  so  it  bent ;  there  the  sun  lodged,  so  it 
broke."  * 

No  other  writer  that  I  know  carries  this  thought  so  far. 

"  Ever  judge  of  men  by  their  professions !  For  tho'  the 
"  bright  moment  of  promising  is  but  a  moment  and  cannot  be 
"  prolonged,  yet,  if  sincere  in  its  moment's  extravagant  goodness, 
"  why,  trust  it,  and  know  the  man  by  it,  I  say — not  by  his  per- 

1  The  Statue  and  the  Bust.  ^  "  Yictorian  Poets."  ^  Saul. 
*  Rdbhi  Ben  Ezra.     ^  Ixion, 


Mk.  bardeen  on  some  of  browning^s  beliefs.  YS 

"  formance — which  is  half  the  world's  work,  interfere,  as  the 
"  world  needs  must  with  its  accidents  and  circumstances, — the 
"  profession  was  purely  the  man's  own  !  I  judge  people  by  what 
"  they  might  be, — not  are  nor  will  be."  ^ 

"  There  grows  in  each  heart  as  in  a  shrine, 
"  The  giant  image  of  Perfection."  2 
"  If  ye  demur,  this  judgment  on  your  head, 
"  Never  to  reach  the  ultimate,  angel's  law, 
"  Indulging  every  instinct  of  the  soul, 
"  There  where  law,  life,  joy,  impulse  are  one  thing !  "^ 
lY.  Nay,  it  is  Mail's  distinctive  Messing  that  he  cannot  reach 
Perfection   here.     Goodness   is   not   position,  but  direction   of 
motion. 

"  Finds  progress,  man's  distinctive  mark  alone, 
"Not  God's  and  not  the  beasts':  God  is,  they  are, 
"  Man  partly  is,  and  wholly  hopes  to  be."^ 
"  They  are  perfect, — how  else  ?  they  shall  never  change, 
"We  are  faulty — why  not?  we  have  time  in  store."* 
"  Imperfection  means  perfection  hid, 
"Reserved  in  part,  to  grace  the  after  time."^ 
"  A  man's  reach  should  exceed  his  grasp, 
"  Or  what's  a  heaven  for  ?  "^ 
"  But  what's  whole,  can  increase  no  more, 
"  Is  dwarfed  and  dies,  since  here's  its  sphere." ' 
"  Better  have  failed  in  the  high  aim,  as  I, 
"  Than  vulgarly  in  the  low  aim  succeed, 
"  As,  God  be  thanked,  I  do  not !  "s 
"  That  low  man  seeks  a  little  thing  to  do, 

"  Sees  it  and  does  it ; 
"  This  high  man  with  a  great  thing  to  pursue, 
"  Does  ere  he  knows  it. 
1  A  SouVs  Tragedy.     ^  Paracelsus.     ^  A  Death  in  the  Desert. 
*  Old  Pictures  in  Florence.     ^  Cleon.     ®  Andrea  del  Sarto. 
'  Di%  Aliter  Visum.     ^  Inn  Album. 


76  MEMORIAL    MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING    CLUB. 

"  That  low  man  goes  on  adding  one  to  one, 

"  His  hundred's  soon  hit : 
"  This  higli  man,  aiming  at  a  million, 

"  Misses  an  unit : 
"That,  has  the  world  here — should  he  need  the  next, 

"  Let  the  world  mind  him  ! 
"  This,  turns  himself  on  God,  and  unperplexed, 
"  Seeking,  shall  find  Him."i 
"  St.    John's  discourse  concludes   with  words   which   are   an 
'  epitome  of  Mr.  Browning's  religious  faith  as  we  recognize  it  in 
'  many  of  his  other  writings.     Man's  life  consists  in  never-ceas- 
'  ing  progress.     The  god-like   power  is  imparted  to  him  gradu- 
'  ally,  and   step  by  step  he  approaches  nearer  to  absolute  truth 
' — to  divine  perfection.     But  in  this  mortal  life  the   goal  can 
'never  be  attained  :  the  ideal  which  he  strives  to  realize  here 
*  exists  only  in  heaven,  and  awaits  him  as  a  reward  of  all  his 
'faithful  efforts."3 

Y.  Hence,  Browning  is  a  firm  believer  in  Immortality.     Ten- 
nyson says  in  "  In  Memoriam." 

"  Oh  yet  we  trust  that  somehow  good 
"  Will  be  the  final  goal  of  ill, 
"  To  pangs  of  nature,  sins  of  will, 
"Defects  of  doubt,  and  taints  of  blood. 
"  That  nothing  walks  with  aimless  feet : 
"  That  not  one  life  shall  be  destroyed, 
"  Or  cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void 
"  When  God  hath  made  the  pile  complete." 
Contrast  this  with  the  steadfast  faith  of  Aht  Yogler : 
"  There  shall  never  be  one  lost  good !     What  was  shall 

live  as  before, 
"  The  evil  is  null,  is  naught,  is  silence  implying  sound ; 
"  What  was  good  shall  be  good,  with,  for  evil,  so  much 
good  more ; 

1  A  Oramjmarian' s  Funeral. 
*  Mrs.  M.  G.  Glazebrook. 


MR.    BAEDEEN   ON    SOME    OF    BROWNINO's   BELIEFS.  77 

"  On  the  earth  the  broken  arcs ;  in  the  heaven  a  per- 
fect round." 

"  The  In  Memoriam  utterances  sound  like  the  voice  of  Mr. 
"Little  Faith,  after  listeninoj  to  Mr.  Greatheart  in  such  a  defiance 
"of  evil  as  this," — says  Edward  Berdoe.  Browning  "is  the  poet 
"  of  the  Gothic — agony  and  harmony  in  unity,  agony  working 
"  itself  at  last  to  a  place  in  the  great  harmony  of  the  whole," 
says  E.  Paxton  Hood. 

"  Why  rushed  the  discords  in,  but  that  harmony  should 
"be  prized?"! 

Love  is  beneath  all, 

"as  some  implied  chord  subsists, 
"  Steadily  underlies  the  accidental  mists 
"  Of  music  springing  thence,  that  run  their  mazy  race 
around."  ^ 

"I  have  faith  such  end  shall  be  ; 

"  From  the  first.  Power  was — I  knew. 
"  Life  has  made  clear  to  me 

"  That,  strive  but  for  closer  view, 
"Love  were  as  plain  to  see." 

"  This  world's  no  blot  for  us, 
"  Nor  blank  :  it  means  intensely,  and  means  good. 
"  To  find  its  meaning  is  my  meat  and  drink."  ^ 

"  Earth  changes,  but  thy  soul  and  God  stand  sure."  * 

In  this  age  of  doubt,  when  men  are  so  proud  of  their  uncer- 
tainty that  they  give  a  name  to  it  and  call  themselves  Agnostics, 
what  a  blessing  there  is  in  these  utterances  of  a  mind  so  gifted  ; 
of  whom  that  other  great  mind  of  this  generation,  George 
Eliot,  said: 

^Aht  Vogler. 
3  Fifine  at  the  Fair. 
'  Fra  Lijppo  Lippi. 
*  Bahhi  Ben  Ezra. 


7S  MEMOiJIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

"  To  be  a  poet  is  to  have  a  soul  so  quick  to  discern  that  no 
"  shade  of  quality  escapes  it,  and  so  quick  to  feel  that  discern- 
"  ment  is  but  a  hand  playing  with  finely  ordered  variety  on  the 
"  chord  of  emotion  ;  a  soul  in  which  knowledge  passes  instantly 
"  into  feeling,  and  feeling  flashes  back  as  a  new  organ  of 
"  knowledge." 

C.  W.  Bardeen. 


EEMAEKS  BY  KEY.  C.  DeB.  MILLS. 


]yir.  C.  DeB.  Mills,  though  not  on  the  programme,  was  called  upon  by 
the  Chairman,  and  spoke  substantially  as  follows  : 

We  have  been  hearing,  here  to-night,  Mr.  Chairman,  the  testi- 
mony drawn  in  careful  statement  of  students,  critics,  in  their 
several  lines  of  research,  of  this  poet  and  philosopher.  These 
have  all  spent  years  in  the  reading  and  study  of  the  various  and 
many  things  he  has  given  to  the  public.  They  have  furnished 
us  their  thoughtful,  deliberate  estimate,  and  pointed  out  to  us  so 
clearly,  so  instructively  the  grounds  they  base  it  on.  We  have 
been  enriched,  enlarged,  and  quickened  exceedingly. 

What  can  /say  now?  What  have  I  any  right  to  attempt  to 
say  ?  I  am  not,  have  never  been  a  student  of  this  poet,  as  I  am 
sorry  to  own.  My  acquaintance  with  his  writings  is  very  super- 
ficial. I  can  give  you  at  best  but  my  rough  impression,  a  judg- 
ment crude,  partial  doubtless,  certainly  far  inadequate,  of  this 
venerated  and  now  sainted  name. 

I  readily  believe  that  Browning  was  a  great  lyric  and  dramatic 
poet.  The  strong  statements  of  his  cotemporaries,  men  them- 
selves of  great  eminence  in  their  respective  fields  of  letters,  some 
of  which  were  kindred  with  his, — such  men  as  Carlyle,  Landor, 
Ruskin,  Dickens,  Lowell,  etc.,  suffice  for  testimony  that  should 
be  conclusive  to  us,  that  there  was  eminent  merit  in  this  man. 
It  is  related  of  Carlyle  by  his  most  recent  biographer.  Dr.  Gar- 
nett,  that  sincerely  wishing  to  compliment  Browning  on  his  sig- 
nal performance  in  writing  The  Hing  and  the  Book^  he  said  to 
him : 

"  It  is  a  wonderful  book,  one  of  the  most  wonderful  poems 
"ever  written.     I  re-read  it  all  through — all  made  out  of  an  Old 

(79) 


80  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

"  Bailey  story  that  might  have  been  told  in  ten  lines,  and  only 
"  wants  forgetting." 

This  was  the  highest  tribute  the  brusque  Scotsman  knew  to 
pay  his  honored  friend,  however  equivocal  the  quality  of  a  por- 
tion of  it  may  seem  to  us.  Landor  spoke  of  him  as  "  a  great 
poet,  a  very  great  poet  indeed,  as  the  world  will  "  have  to  agree 
"  with  us  in  thinking." 

A  rare  fortune  has  befallen  this  man,  without  precedent  in 
modern  times,  — and  these  are  the  only  times  in  which  there 
could  have  been  a  precedent, — in  that  during  his  own  life  time, 
numerous  Societies  have  been  formed,  devoted  supreme  and  sole 
to  the  study  of  this  writer,  the  attempt  to  penetrate,  to  interpret, 
to  apprehend  his  often  difficult,  sometimes  enigmatic  poems. 
Wherever  the  English-speaking  peoples  are,  there  are  the  Brown- 
ing Societies,  composed  of  the  brightest,  most  intelligent  and 
thoughtful  in  their  several  communities,  religiously  dedicated  to 
these  studies,  and  feeling  themselves,  I  doubt  not,  well  rewarded 
for  all  the  labor  they  bestow.  Never,  so  far  as  I  know,  has 
such  fortune  come  to  any  author  before.  It  shows  that  Brown- 
ing has  already  spoken  to  his  own  time  and  age,  has  delivered  a 
message  that  a  multitude  are  eager  to  hear. 

I  have  frankly  to  own  that  some  things  I  have  found  in  the 
reading  of  this  poet,  have  not  met  my  own  thought,  and  have 
had  the  effect  to  reduce  rather  than  heighten  the  attraction  I  have 
felt  to  him.  He  seems  to  rest  in  an  optimism,  which  to  some  of 
us  would  seem  disproportionate,  excessive,  verging  towards  if 
not  touching  indifferentism,  and  which  would  bear  to  a  tame 
sleepy  acquiescence  in  all  things  about  us  as  they  are,  irrespec- 
tive of  the  agency  of  man  to  amend  and  to  save.  He  appears 
at  times  to  break  down,  to  obliterate  all  distinction  of  character, 
and  essentially  to  say  to  us  that  the  broad  way  and  the  narrow 
both  bring  up  at  the  same  goal.  I  suppose  it  is  what  we  have  in 
Emerson,  as  he  expresses  himself  sometimes  in  very  bold  state- 
ment, "  Man  though  in  brothels,  or  jails,  or  on  gibbets,  is  on  his 
"  way  to  all  that  is  good  and  true."  If  I  understand  Browning 
in  some  of  his  utterances,  he  seems  to  carry  as  far. 


BEV.    ME.    mills'    EEMAEK8.  81 

I  am  well  aware  that  there  is  a  side  of  truth  in  all  this  decla- 
ration of  an  exceeding  optimism.  "  God,"  says  Plutarch, 
"  is  the  brave  man's  hope,  and  not  the  coward's  excuse."  There 
are  hours  wlien  we  must  rest  sole,  final,  in  the  absolute  assurance 
that  tliere  is  a  Rule  supreme,  far  higher,  wholly  beyond  all  we 
can  see,  which  is  doing  all  things  to  infinite  ends  of  excellence, 
bringing  accord  out  of  discord,  order  out  of  chaos,  good  out  of 
evil,  drawing  nourishment  from  very  poison,  making  all  the  sin, 
wickedness  we  see,  subserve  finally  the  highest  and  best.  I  know 
of  no  act  of  worship  more  genuine,  more  pure,  than  is  done  when 
the  soul  in  midst  of  its  severe  stress  and  trial,  sorrow,  suffering, 
breavement,  darkness  of  solitude  that  knows  no  ray  of  light,  dis- 
cerns no  solace,  no  providence,  or  good  or  justice  at  all,  lays 
itself  naked  on  the  bosom  of  the  infinite  Truth  and  Love,  and 
feels,  ejaculates  from  deepest  depths  within,  "  All  things  are  well, 
"  and  shall  be  well." 

But  that  lazy  optimism,  and  sleepy  indifferentism,  which  con- 
founds all  moral  distinction,  abolishes  the  ideal,  which  makes 
Jesus  and  Judas  essentially  one,  which  sees  all  conduct  the  same, 
all  types  of  character  identical  in  their  quality,  all  men  alike  hasten- 
ing forward  with  best  endeavor  to  the  goal  of  their  being,  noth- 
ing left  for  human  effort  to  do  to  mend,  correct,  meliorate, — is 
pusillanimous,  treasonable,  false  to  nature  and  to  man.  It  makes 
God  the  coward's  excuse,  is  relaxing  to  tone,  and  demoralizing  to 
the  energies  of  the  being  within.  I  have  been  in  communities 
where  such  optimists  and  dreamers  dwell,  and  have  heard  them 
described  as  among  the  most  characterless,  invincibly  renunciant, 
inert,  and  worthless  of  mortals.  So  far  as  any  endeavor  in  slight- 
est degree  for  improvement  of  their  neighborhood,  or  of  society, 
was  concerned  in  any  respect  whatever,  they  might  have  been 
just  as  well  in  Dahomey,  or  on  another  planet.  They  have 
drunken  deep  of  tliat  cup  which  Browning  sometinies  pours. 
"  A  too  rapid  unificati<in,  and  an  excessive  appliance  to  parts  and 
"  particulars,"  says  Emerson,  "  are  the  twin  dangers  of  specula- 
"  tion."     A  too  rapid  unification  it  is  in  sphere  of  the  practical. 


82  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING  CLUB. 

which  ignores  the  fact  of  conflict  in  this  world  of  Time,  and 
deadens,  stifles  in  the  mind,  the  mandate  of  moral  appeal. 
Sooner,  infinitely  sooner  than  that  torpor  and  renunciation  of 
duty,  I  would  hear  with  stunning  emphasis  the  iteration  perpetual 
of  Kant's  'Categorical  Imperative,'  would  have  for  us  all,  the 
Sinai  thunders  and  terrific  lightning  flashes  of  Carlylc's  denun- 
ciation and  drastic  summons  to  gird  up  and  do,  to  fight  a  man's 
battle  for  God,  for  the  claim  of  high  Heaven  and  the  Supreme 
Justice  in  this  false  and  maddened  world.  This  is  stimulating, 
medicinal,  wakes  and  rouses  the  torpid,  slumbering  energies ; 
bidding  the  man  out  to  conflict,  to  the  exposures  and  the  perils  of 
the  fight ;  that  is  soporific,  relaxing,  lulls  to  death.  Ariston, 
Plutarch  tells  us,  was  wont  to  say  that  "  neither  a  bath  nor  a  lec- 
"ture  served  any  purpose  unless  it  were  purgative." 

Browning  was  not  such  a  renunciant ;  he  was  no  deserter  or 
coward.  He  incites  to  the  following  of  the  high  behests ;  sum- 
mons each  to  be  up  and  do.  The  one  sin  he  finds  that  stains 
and  stings  with  mortal  taint  the  individual,  is  permitting  to  him- 
self to  live  and  end  the  life  with  the  "  unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt 
"loin."  A  man  cannot  do  this,  inciting  every  one  to  reach  his 
utmost  best,  holding  up  the  immense  sanctions  that  overarch 
human  conduct,  without  affirming  in  implication  that  there  is  a 
difference  pronounced,  vital,  between  the  worthy  and  unworthy, 
true  and  false,  good  and  bad.  That  he  seems  at  times  to  blend 
all,  carrying  his  optimism  to  such  point  as  apparently  to  imph'- 
the  indifference,  the  substantial  identity  of  all  conduct,  all  char- 
acter, is  to  my  view  a  limitation,  a  fault  in  Browning.  It  abates 
from  the  virile  quality  of  the  man.  Emerson  speaking  of  the 
writings  of  Plato,  remarks  that  he  is  always  literary,  never  other- 
wise. There  is  "  regnancy  of  intellect,"  so  absolute  as  to  be  vir- 
tually sole  in  his  work,  and  hence  "  his  writings  have  not  the 
"  vital  authority  which  the  screams  of  prophets  and  the  sermons 
"  of  unlettered  Arabs  and  Jews  possess."  There  is  no  power  that 
takes  and  holds,  commands  the  person,  be  he  who  he  may,  as 
does  the  moral  appeal,  presenting,  pressing  the  ideal  claim  of 


EEV.    MR.    mills'    KEMAEKS.  83 

sovereign  law.  I  think  I  liave  read  writers,  who  in  their  inspir- 
ing to  lofty  character,  in  rousing,  impelling,  setting  on  fire  for 
the  attainment  of  highest,  best,  in  royal  endeavor,  and  sublime 
self  sacrifice,  were  superior  to  Browning,  though  in  genius  much 
inferior  to  him. 

But  I  remember  that  our  brilliant  historian  and  philosopher, 
not  long  since  passed  away,  unequalled  in  his  delineations  of 
character,  and  unexcelled  in  his  affirmation  of  the  moral,  at  the 
close  of  his  masterly  essay  upon  Mirabeau,  calls  our  attention  to 
three  moral  reflections  that  he  draws  from  his  subject: — "  Moral 
"  reflection  third  and  last, — that  neither  thou  nor  we,  good  reader, 
"  had  any  hand  in  the  making  of  this  Mirabeau  ; — else  who  knows 
"but  we  had  objected,  in  our  wisdom?  But  it  was  the  Upper 
"Powers  that  made  him,  without  once  consulting  us  ;  they  and 
"  not  we,  so  and  not  otherwise."  Browning  is  what  he  is,  by 
temperament  and  constitution  ;  his  endowment  is  so  and  not  other- 
wise. We  must  take  him  as  he  is,  and  see  what  he  has  of  value 
for  us. 

I  believe  the  reader  must  see  that  for  one  thing  he  has  a  singu- 
lar, an  exceptional  appreciation  of  the  divineness  of  womanhood. 
This  seems  to  mark  him  as  almost  sui  generis^  and  sole  among  all 
the  writers  of  our  age  that  I  know ;  it  puts  him  on  elevated 
plane  when  measured  beside  any  of  the  great  writers  of  history. 
He  has  penetrated  these  depths,  he  knows  woman's  soul,  he  reads 
her  tender,  sensitive,  sweet  nature,  her  possibilities  with  all  this 
of  brave  heroic  character.  In  The  Ring  and  the  Boole  he  has 
given  a  lofty  and  most  touching  ideal : — this  girl,  this  child,  of 
parentage  unknown  but  guilty,  drawn  originally  as  would  appear 
from  one  of  the  slums  of  Rome,  bound  over,  sold,  while  yet  but 
a  child,  in  pretended  marriage  to  a  brute,  so  sheer,  so  unqualified, 
that  there  is  scarcely  in  the  whole  man  one  relieving  feature, — a 
character  of  "  pure  cussedness,"  as  is  sometimes  said  among  us, — 
enslaved  in  a  relation  to  which  she  was  no  party,  and  wherein 
there  was  nothing  not  revolting  to  nature,  subjected  there  to  un- 
named wrong  and  outrage,  in  the  end  murdered  at  Guido's  hand, 


84  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

and  passing  out  of  life  with  a  testimony  on  her  lips  of  highest 
nobleness,  supreme  generosity  of  soul,  a  sweetness  of  affection 
and  compassion  for  her  enemies  and  murderers  like  that  of  the 
dying  Jesus  for  his  foes. 

"To  keep  tenderness,"  says  an  ancient  Chinese  Sage,  "  I  pro- 
"  nounce  strength."  "  The  weakest  thing,"  he  declares,  "  Shall 
"gallop  over  the  strongest."  "And  I,  if  I  be  lifted  up,"  says 
Jesus,  "  will  draw  all  men  to  me."  This  character  of  such 
divine  celestial  qualities  as  Browning  gives  Pompilia,  union  and 
blending  of  both  tenderness  and  strength,  he  must  have  realized 
to  portray,  must  have  acquired  to  be  able  to  describe.  He  had 
been  that,  had  become  in  thought,  in  soul  experience,  that  woman. 
"  The  soul,"  says  Prof.  Newman,  "  must  become  a  woman."  It 
was  because  he  had  percurred  this  experience  in  his  own  life  and 
being,  that  he  could  afford  us  this  lofty  ideal  in  the  Pompilia  he 
presents,  certainly  one  of  the  most  touching,  most  inspiring,  ex- 
alted characters  that  have  ever  been  depicted  by  bard  and  poet 
in  any  age  of  history. 

He  acquired  this  fine  delicate  appreciation,  reading  of  the 
noblest  rich  qualities  of  the  soul,  and  appropriation  of  them  in 
his  own  being,  through  his  acquaintance  with  one  woman.  No 
one  can  doubt  that  his  meeting  with  Elizabeth  Barrett  marked 
an  epoch  in  the  life  for  him.  From  this  he  could  date,  it  opened 
an  era  new  and  memorable  evermore.  Her  presence  and  spirit 
unsealed  all  the  deep  fountains  of  his  being,  waked  the  silent 
flame  into  song,  revealed  the  divineness  of  womanhood,  and 
made  him  henceforth  in  this  appreciation  a  full  man.  "  That 
"  male  and  female  should  dwell  together,"  says  Mencius,  "  is  the 
"  greatest  of  human  relations."  This  woman  was  Mentor,  lode 
star,  Madonna  to  Browning ;  he  received  new  birth  through  her. 
Read  the  invocations  to  her  his  "  Lyric  Love,"  in  The  Ring  and 
the  Bocik^  as  he  offers  his  tribute  : — 

— "  My  due 
"  To  God  who  best  taught  song  by  gift  of  thee," — 
and  in  other  of  his  writings,  and  you  shall  see  what  this  pure 


REV.    MR.    mills'    REMARKS.  85 

exalted  soul,  this  royal  type  of  womanhood  was  and  ever  remained 
to  him.  Through  her  he  could  see,  by  her  inspiration  and  steady 
uplift  he  was  gifted  with  the  power  to  depict  and  bring  alive 
before  us,  so  that  we  too  saw  and  felt  the  divine  qualities  of 
character  he  shows  incarnate  in  his  Pompilia. 

"  In  thy  face,"  said  the  dying  Bunsen,  looking  up  into  the 
countenance  of  his  wife, — "in  thy  face  have  I  beheld  the 
"  Eternal."  Through  her,  the  maiden,  the  wife,  the  mother, 
Browning  saw;  he  read  the  symbolism,  all  the  world  was  laid 
open  to  him,  he  apprehended,  appreciated  women,  men,  children, 
all  mankind,  and  great  J^ature  besides.  "  He  that  having  the 
"  masculine  nature,"  says  Lao  Tsze,  "  knows  at  same  time  to 
"keep  the  feminine  nature,  shall  be  the  whole  world's  channel." 

We  must  say  he  was  lemoned  in  the  lore  of  love.  He  had  read 
deep,  had  had  an  inmost  experience,  and  it  finds  utterance  in  all 
that  he  speaks  and  does.  He  had  had  an  experience,  and  that 
experience  wrote  on  all  his  nature,  transformed,  quickened,  and 
new  made  all  his  being.  He  became  the  sweet  singer  of  this 
sentiment,  not  on  earthly  plane  simply,  but  on  the  spiritual,  the 
eternal.  Love  is  the  one  theme  to  which  the  mind  never  grows 
old,  we  never  weary  hearing  its  stor}' ;  when  it  carries  to  the 
heights  of  pure,  spiritual  devotion  of  one  to  another,  of  man  to 
woman,  woman  to  man,  it  is  forever  supremely  engaging  and 
inspiring.  Read  By  the  Fh^eside^  and  there  see  what  sweet, 
tender,  exalted  affection  his  was,  so  reverent,  unselfish  to  point 
of  self-abnegating,  as  he  describes  in  reminiscence  the  lone  walk 
of  the  two  together  in  the  solitary  gorge  as  the  night  shadows 
were  falling,  the  presence  of  the  still,  unused,  dilapidated  temple, 
the  looking  down  of  the  mute  trees  upon  them,  and  the  silent 
speech  audible  to  the  inner  ear,  the  mingling  together  of  the 
two  souls  in  this  conimuniun,  and  the  coming  of  the  moment, 
the  fleeting  fugitive  instant,  that  was  the  critical,  the  eventful 
one  for  him,  that  had  in  its  keeping  his  fortune,  his  fate,  for 
life,  and  the  manner  and  way  in  which  he  fronted  and  met  it. 
Nothing  should  take  from  him  the  reverence  due  to  personality, 


86  MEMOEIAL   MEETING,    SYEACU8E   BKOWNING   CLTJB. 

nothing  tempt  him  to  swerve  from  that  sentiment  of  perfect 
respect  and  religious  deference  to  the  judgment,  the  will  of  that 
other,  which  must  be  left  unapproached  by  so  much  as  a  breath 
that  might  influence  or  sway  the  scale  in  decision  to  the  result 
he  desires.  The  soul  palpitates  with  anxious  hope,  with  eager 
tense  solicitude,  but  it  must  not  suffer  its  least  wish  to  invade,  to 
touch  the  precincts  of  the  sacred  autonomy  of  that  true,  that 
upright  and  lofty  heart.  It  is  beautiful,  exalted  above  the  plane 
of  all  our  common,  I  might  say  our  uncommon,  our  exception- 
ally good  and  superior  life,  in  society.  Who  of  us  has  recog- 
nized and  honored  such  an  ideal  in  his  moments  of  passionate 
devotion,  in  his  addresses  and  wooing,  and  putting  the  question 
to  the  maiden  of  his  love?  As  Confucius  is  reported  to  have 
said  to  one  of  his  disciples  in  regard  to  the  great  Law  of  Reci- 
procity in  conduct,  or  as  we  term  it  the  Golden  Rule,  "  Tsze, 
"  you  have  not  attained  to  that  "  ;  so  may  Browning  say  certainly 
to  most  of  us,  in  reference  to  this  norm  for  man. 

An  ideal  union  it  was,  the  celestial  marriage  on  earth.  The 
two  persons,  each  distinct,  autonomic,  itself  to  the  end,  yet 
melted  and  blended  gloriously  into  one.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 
said,  "  I  feel  a  self-congratulation  in  knowing  myself  capable  of 
"  such  sensations  as  he  (Angelo)  intended  to  excite."  We  may 
feel  self-congratulation  if  we  may  find  ourselves  capable  of  the 
sentiments,  the  stir  of  quickening  and  the  aspiration  Browning 
intended  to  excite  in  the  pictures,  as  he  draws  them  for  us  in 
lineaments  of  beauty  all  his  own,  of  the  true  love. 

I  have  sometimes  thought  of  him  in  regard  to  this  matter  of 
the  sentiment  in  comparison  with  Goethe,  whom  we  all  know  to 
have  been  one  of  the  transcendent  geniuses  and  great  poets  of 
the  world.  Professor  Harris  has  characterized  his  works  as  sug- 
gestive beyond  the  works  of  all  other  writers.  Mrs.  Shorey,  in 
an  excellent  article  she  has  written  of  him,^   describes  Goethe 

1  On  the  "Elective  Affinities,"  a  paper  read  before  the  Milwau- 
kee Literary  School  in  August,  1886.  Published  in  the  "Poetry 
and  Philosophy  of  Goethe,"  Chicago,  1887. 


KEV.    MR.    mills'    REMARKS.  8Y 

as  "very  specially  the  poet  of  women."  "  No  other  poet  has 
"given  us  so  many  types  of  womanly  perfection  and  graces." 
On  the  side  of  the  tender  sentiment,  Goethe  was  very  richly  en- 
dowed. "Of  a  poetic,  feeling-full  nature,"  says  Calvert  of  him. 
But  that  sentiment  went  out  exuberantly,  it  became  wild,  un- 
regulated, especially  in  the  earlier  years,  the  morning  manhood 
of  the  poet,  and  he  fell  deeply,  passionately  in  love  many  and 
many  a  time.  The  affection  he  indulged  was  allowed  to  be 
illicit,  and  brought  him  seeds  and  fruitage  of  bitter  sorrow. 
His  weakness,  we  may  almost  say,  came  of  his  greatness,  in  that 
he  was  so  exceptionally  dowered  on  the  side  of  the  affectional ; 
his  greatness  fell  short  of  the  true  and  highest  conquest,  and 
thus  descended,  lapsed  to  weakness,  hard  for  us  to  condone  in 
such  a  man.  If,  as  Carlyle  says,  he  "climbed  the  craggy 
"  heights," — and  I  think  we  must  believe  that, — it  was  through 
pain,  manifold  suffering,  sorrow,  remorse. 

We  find  Browning  not  like  our  poet  in  regard  to  this  early 
experience  of  infirmity  and  sin.  His  nature,  too,  had  the  pas- 
sional, he  was  a  lover,  warm,  ardent,  o'erflowing,  but  it  was  a 
regulated  affection,  a  loyal,  lofty  passion.  It  had  in  it  self-abne- 
gation, willingness  to  make  the  high  surrender,  a  supreme  rever- 
ence for  personality,  and  devotion  chivalric  to  the  end,  of  his  soul 
to  one.  Warm  as  was  his  love,  it  was  noble  and  pure,  ardent  as 
the  affection,  it  was  always  superior,  of  celestial  type  and  quality. 
Goethe  must  take  his  place  bielow,  he  stands  not  his  equal  here. 

I  have  sometimes  thought  of  him  beside  Emerson,  our  great 
American  sage,  philosopher,  poet,  too.  Emerson  had  loves,  but 
they  seem  to  have  been  largely  impersonal,  if  I  may  so  say.  In 
respect  to  persons,  in  respect  to  women,  his  nature  appears  not 
to  have  been  full-dowered  as  was  that  of  either  of  the  names  just 
referred  to.  The  affections,  it  has  been  said,  were  imprisoned  iu 
the  intellect.  All  emotion  was  saturated  and  in  a  degree  dis- 
solved in  pure  thought.  He  was  in  temperament  calm,  poised, 
self-centred.  To  great  extent  he  was  always  self-fed.  The  man 
who  could  write,  "  I  love  man  but  not  men  ; "  who  could  say, 


88  MEMORIAL   MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING    CLUB, 

"  The  soul  knows  no  persons,"  yon  would  not  expect  to  be  deep- 
ly, certainly  not  overpoweringly  drawn  in  his  relations  to  any. 
He  communed  with  ideas,  walked  in  companionship  with  inner 
and  invisible.  I  opine  that  his  soul  in  the  deeper  depths  was  a 
casket  that  no  man,  no  woman  ever  opened,  a  shrine  that  no  eye 
ever  beheld  save  his  own.  The  seen  was  everywhere  transpar- 
ent to  him.  He  views  others  as  hints  of  a  possibility  not  yet 
realized.  In  any  bereavement  he  cannot  be  vitally  bereft ;  his 
eye  looks  ever  upward  and  bej'ond.  He  sees  always  the  silver 
lining  in  the  cloud,  and  reads  the  compensations,  the  great  medi- 
ations in  nature,  the  supreme  beneficence  that  presides  over  all. 
His  heart  is  staid,  restful,  at  repose  everywhere. 

There  was  an  element  of  the  incommunicable  in  his  nature ;  he 
could  not  impart  himself  as  he  fain  would  with  fullness,  with 
freedom  to  others, — no,  not  even  his  intimates.  In  the  confi- 
dences with  himself  which  he  commits  to  his  journal  he  says, — 
"Strange  it  is  that  I  can  go  back  to  no  part  of  youth,  no  past 
''  relation  without  shrinking  and  shrinking.  Not  Ellen,  not  Ed- 
"  ward,  not  Charles.  Infinite  compunctions  embitter  each  of 
"  these  dear  names,  and  all  who  surrounded  them."  He  mourns 
that  he  was  not  made,  like  these  beatified  mates  of  his,  super- 
ficially generous  and  noble  as  well  as  internally  so.  Dr.  Holmes 
says  of  him,  "Emerson  is  a  citizen  of  the  universe  who  has  taken 
"up  his  residence  for  a  few  days  and  nights  in  this  travelling 
"  caravansery  between  the  two  inns  that  hang  out  the  signs  of 
"  Yenus  and  Mars.  This  little  planet  could  not  provincialize 
"  such  a  man." 

Serene,  spotless  sage  he,  opulent  and  generous,  enriching  witli 
his  solid  sparkling  wisdom, — ingots  unnumbered  of  pure  imperish- 
able gold, — the  present  and  tlie  coming  ages,  perhaps  beyond  any 
other  man  of  the  century.  He  abode  for  a  time  on  earth,  but 
was  primarily  not  of  earth,  so  exalted  in  his  thought,  so  pro- 
nounced and  fixed  in  his  idealism,  dwelling  in  the  transcendent, 
his  devotion  sole  upon  that "  high  divine  beauty  that  can  be  loved 
"  without  effeminacy."     He  seems  here  not  to  belong  to  the  world 


EEV.    MR.    mills'    EEMAKKS,  89 

of  Time,  not  to  be  one  like  ourselves,  with  the  affections,  senti- 
ment, passions  of  mortal  men. 

Emerson  was  ethereal,  Browning  mundane,  while  also  elevated 
and  ideal.  Emerson  lived  mainly  in  the  intellectual,  Browning 
with  intellect  large,  exceptionally  generous  and  great  in  endow- 
ment, had  united  sentiment,  warmth,  ardor,  flowing  out  lyrically 
in  expression  of  a  most  vital  and  intense  love.  Emerson,  so  raised 
his  eye,  so  empyrean  his  vision,  looked  beyond  the  personal, 
knew  not  persons  ;  Browning,  denizen  of  earth,  to  which  he 
grappled  as  one  belonging  there,  looked  around  as  eager  to  know, 
to  appropriate  all,  fastened  to  person,  by  whose  presence  he  was 
inspired  and  lifted  to  his  loftiest,  sweetest  utterances  in  verse. 
Browning  had  no  impediment  that  withheld  him  from  the  free 
fitting  expression  of  his  inner,  glowing  self.  Browning  on  the 
side  of  the  affectional,  comes  nearer,  stands  closer,  is  more  help- 
ful than  Emerson.  He  in  this  regard  occupied  higher  vantage,  is 
more  inspiring  and  uplifting  to  us  than  Goethe. 

Shall  we  not  hope,  shall  we  not  believe,  that  the  two  souls 
that  were  so  near  and  so  much  to  each  other,  were  life,  quicken- 
ing, and  fresh  accession  of  power  each  to  each,  disparted  by  the 
too  early  death  of  the  cherished  mate,  have  now  again  in  the 
eternities  and  immensities  of  God,  become  united  and  one, 
never  to  be  separated  more  ?  Shall  we  not  believe  that  he,  sore 
bereft,  left  lone,  to  whom  the  earth  wherever  visited,  and  how 
bright  soever  with  its  companionships  and  affections,  was  still 
one  great  solitude,  who, — like  the  forlorn  necessitous  prince  in 
Goethe's  Tale  of  Tales,  deprived  of  half  his  nature,  shorn  of 
the  best  of  himself,  wandering  wide  and  far  searching  through 
all  lands  for  the  Fair  Lily  that  should  restore  and  make  him 
whole, — was  himself  also  a  mourner  and  a  seeker,  has  now  gained 
his  "Lyric  Love,  soul  half-angel  and  half -bird,"  and  henceforth 
in  the  embrace  and  companionship  of  her  sweet  being,  is  to  reach 
ever  up  with  her  to  new  heights  of  wisdom,  possession,  power, 
reading  through  the  symbol  to  the  substance,  through  personal 
to  reality  transcendent  of  person,  beyond  and  above  any  and  all 


90  MEMORIAL    MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING  CLUB. 

we  know ;  through  the  qualities  we  see,  to  that,  the  One  we  do 
not  see,  approximating  forever  through  this  staircase  of  symbol 
to  the  illimitable,  the  infinite  Truth  and  Beauty  and  Love  ? 

"  Think,  when  our  one  soul  understands 

"  The  great  "Word  which  makes  all  things  new — 
"When  earth  breaks  up  and  Heaven  expands — 

"  How  will  the  change  strike  me  and  you 
"  In  the  House  not  made  with  hands  ? " 
"  Oh,  I  must  feel  your  brain  prompt  mine, 

"  Your  heart  anticipate  my  heart, 
"  You  must  be  just  before,  in  fine, 

"  See  and  make  me  see,  for  your  part, 
"  New  depths  of  the  Divine  ! " 


NOTES  OF  A  CALL  ON  MR.  BROWNING. 


In  January,  1884,  I  happened  to  be  in  London  at  the  time 
when  Mr.  Browning,  having  recently  finished  FerishtcCs  Fan- 
cies^ had  visiteid  his  son  in  Paris,  and  come  on  to  Warwick  Cres- 
cent for  a  time.  I  wrote  to  him,  asking  if  as  a  representative 
of  the  Syracuse  Browning  Club  I  might  be  permitted  to  call 
upon  him,  and  received  the  reply  of  which  a  photographed  fac- 
simile is  printed  facing  the  title-page  of  this  volume,  the  only 
change  being  that  in  his  note  the  crest  was  upon  the  flap  of  the 
envelope. 

Warwick  Crescent  was  off  the  Edgeware  Road,  near  Padding- 
ton,  in  a  locality  not  particularly  pleasant :  a  four-story  house 
at  the  end  of  a  long  brick  block.  Without  taking  up  my  card  a 
maid  ushered  me  at  once  up  two  pairs  of  stairs  to  the  famous 
drawing-room  that  so  many  Browningites  remember  fondly. 
This  extended  the  length  of  the  house,  and  was  filled  with 
furniture  so  various  that  one  readily  surmised  most  of  the  arti- 
cles must  have  individual  histories.  Some  tapestry  hung  from 
the  wall,  a  grand  piano  occupied  much  of  the  front  room,  and 
Mr.  Browning,  who  greeted  me  cordially,  drew  up  two  comforta- 
ble green  chairs  before  the  grate. 

He  began  the  conversation,  like  the  rest  of  the  world,  by  com- 
plaining of  the  weather,  saying  it  seemed  different  enough  to 
come  to  London,  where  he  was  told  the  sun  had  not  been  seen 
in  fourteen  days,  from  Venice,  where  for  weeks  the  sky  had 
been  unclouded,  and  the  nightingales  were  singing.  He  asked 
if  we  had  the  nightingale  in  America,  said  there  was  an  Ameri- 
can artist  in  Venice  who  painted  his  robins  as  big  as  young 
pigeons,  and  wondered  if  robins  were  really  as  large  as  that  with 
us.     He  spoke  of  the  American  lady  whose  guest  he  had  been 

(91) 


92  MEMOEIAL    MEETING,    SYRACUSE   BROWNING   CLUB. 

in  Yenice,  saying  that  he  had  known  duchesses  and  princesses, 
but  never  hostess  more  royal  in  her  hospitality.  To  my  surprise, 
he  told  me  he  received  no  royalty  upon  the  edition  of  his  works 
published  in  Boston,  and  had  never  even  seen  it.  They  had  paid 
him  something  upon  the  first  volumes  issued,  but  owing  to  some 
disagreement  with  the  London  publishers  had  not  continued  it. 

I  asked  him  about  the  new  cheap  edition  of  his  works  that 
had  been  announced,  and  he  said  he  was  afraid  Mr.  Furnivall 
had  interrupted  that  project  by  excessive  zeal,  putting  a  note 
into  the  "  Academy  "  about  a  shilling  edition  we  ought  to  have. 

"  And  you  know,"  he  went  on  to  say,  "  a  shilling  edition  of 
"  my  works  would  never  pay.  It  is  different  with  Tennyson. 
"  He  began  a  little  before  I  did,  but  his  poems  took  the  public  by 
"storm.  They  appeal  to  everybody  at  the  first  glance,  while 
"  mine  have  to  be  studied  into." 

I  said  it  was  perhaps  partly  because  we  had  to  study  into  them 
that  those  of  us  who  took  that  pains  felt  such  peculiar  interest 
in  them  ;  and  that  if  one  could  judge  from  the  Browning  socie- 
ties springing  up  everywhere  the  number  who  felt  they  must 
have  the  help  he  gave  was  increasing  rapidly. 

Looking  musingly  into  the  fire,  his  legs  stretched  out,  and  his 
hands  in  his  trowsers  pockets,  he  replied  at  some  length : 

"  Whatever  popularity  my  books  have,"  he  said,  "  if  that  term 
"  can  yet  be  applied  to  them  at  all,  has  grown  up  within  a  very  few 
"  years.  I  have  waited  long  enough  for  it.  I  have  always  felt 
"  there  was  something  in  them,  and  I  have  had  a  small  but 
"constant  and  eminent  band  of  adherents.  Why,  years  and 
"  years  ago,  a  man  who  stands  very  high — well  as  high  as  any 
"  critic — wrote  to  me  :  '  Now,  my  dear  Browning,  I  tell  you  in 
" '  strict  confidence  that ' — never  mind  what,  but  he  expressed  a 
"judgment  so  gratifying  that  if  he  had  but  said  a  quarter  of  it 
"  aloud  it  would  have  done  me  a  world  of  good  with  the  public. 
"  But  I  have  had  to  wait  for  that." 

I  remarked  that  with  us  at  home  it  was  not  merely  as  a  literary 
luxury,  but  as  a  practical  help  in  the  difficult  problems  of  life 


NOTES    OF    A    CALL    ON   ME.    BROWNING.  93 

that  we  had  seized  upon  his  books  with  such  eagerness.  We 
felt  personally  grateful  to  him  quite  as  much  as  a  philosopher  as 
a  poet.  He  seemed  interested  in  what  I  told  him  of  our  club, 
particularly  of  the  effect  it  had  had  in  bringing  into  religious 
and  moral  sympathy  those  whose  creeds  had  been  named  so 
differently  that  they  had  supposed  themselves  chasms  apart.  He 
even  encouraged  me  to  describe  at  some  length  a  meeting  held 
the  winter  before  at  Bishop  Huntington's,  where  Methodist  and 
Unitarian,  Presbyterian  and  Catholic,  Episcopal  and  Agnostic 
vied  in  seeking  for  points  of  agreement  instead  of  points  of 
dissension. 

But  when  I  asked  him  as  to  an  interpretation,  I  found  him 
singularly  forgetful  of  his  own  best  work.  We  had  battled 
together  over  the  line, 

"  Sirs,  I  obeyed," 
in  Caponsacchi's  tale  of  his  conversion.  At  first  most  of  us  had 
thought  it  was  Pompilia  he  obeyed,  and  had  been  quite  impa- 
tient when  Mr.  Mundy  had  insisted  that  it  was  not  Pompilia  but 
the  Church.  One  by  one,  however,  we  had  most  of  us  come 
around  to  Mr.  Mundy's  way  of  thinking,  and  now  we  should  be 
glad  to  be  assured  by  the  poet  himself  that  we  were  right. 

He  listened  indulgently,  but  replied  that  the  fact  was  he  had 
not  read  The  Ring  and  the  Book  since  he  wrote  it,  and  he  did 
not  remember  that  particular  passage ;  but  from,  my  statement 
of  the  context  (!)  he  should  think  it  must  be  the  Church  Capon- 
sacchi  obeyed :  in  fact  he  was  certain  of  it ;  it  couldn't  have 
been  Pompilia,  But  it  was  long  since  he  had  seen  the  book. 
The  Browning  Society  ^  had  given  him  a  set  of  all  his  works, 

1  Browning  kept  clear  of  our  society,  and  we  kept  clear  of  him. 
But  when  we  couldn't  understand  a  passage  or  a  poem,  I  either 
walkt  or  wrote  to  him,  and  got  his  explanation  of  it.  At  first  I 
didn't  take  the  volume  with  me,  and  he  amused  me  very  much 
by  saying,  "  'Pon  my  word  I  don't  know  what  I  did  mean  by 
"  the  poem.  I  gave  away  my  last  copy  six  years  ago,  and  I 
"  haven't  seen  a  line  of  it  since.     But  I'll  borrow  a  copy  to-mor- 


94  MEMORIAL  MEETING,   SYRACUSE  BKOWNENQ  CLUlB. 

but  SO  elegantly  bound  that  he  had  not  wanted  to  have  them 
about  till  he  changed  his  residence,  and  in  fact  he  had  never 
opened  them  to  the  light.  He  was  soon  to  sell  this  house  to  a 
railway-company  that  wanted  to  erect  a  station  here ;  and  when 
he  moved  into  a  larger  one,  these  books  should  have  a  prominent 
place.  In  fact,  he  would  hunt  up  The  Ring  and  the  Book  now 
if  I  particularly  desired :  but  of  course  1  did  not  insist. 

Indeed,  I  had  already  been  beguiled  by  the  poet's  cordial  man- 
ner into  staying  much  longer  than  I  ought,  and  I  soon  took  my 
leave. 

C.  W.   Baedeen. 

"  row,  and  look  at  it  again.  If  I  don't  write  before  Sunday, 
"  come  to  lunch  and  I'll  tell  you  about  it."  So  I  got  up  a  sub- 
scription, and  on  his  seventieth  birthday,  May  7,  1882,  sent  him 
a  handsomely-bound  set  of  his  own  Works  in  an  oak  case  carved 
with  Bells  and  Pomegranates,  and  with  this  inscription  in  the 
volumes :  "  To  Robert  Browning  on  his  Seventieth  Birthday,  May 
"  7,  1882,  from  some  members  of  the  Browning  Societies  of  Lon- 
"  don,  Oxford,  Cambridge,  Bradford,  Cheltenham,  Cornell,  and 
"  Philadelphia,  with  heart-felt  wishes  for  his  long  life  and  hap- 
"  piness.  These  members  having  ascertained  that  the  Works  of 
"  a  great  modern  Poet  are  never  in  Robert  Browning's  house 
"  when  need  is  to  refer  to  them,  beg  him  to  accept  a  set  of  these 
"  Works,  which  they  assure  him  will  be  found  worthy  of  his  most 
"  serious  attention." — Dr.  F.  J.  Furnivall,  president  of  the 
Browning  Society  of  London,  in  "  Pall  Mall  Budget "  for  Dec. 
19,  1889. 


9 


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